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TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
TechCrunch Disrupt is where you’ll find innovation for every stage of your startup journey. Whether you’re a budding founder with a revolutionary idea, a seasoned startup looking to scale, or an investor seeking the next big thing, Disrupt offers unparalleled resources, connections, and expert insights to propel your venture forward.
Find innovation for every stage at Disrupt 2025
From idea to IPO, Disrupt 2025 will map out the path for startups to achieve their next major milestone.
Join 10,000 startup and VC leaders
Looking to meet founders, connect with investors, seek advice, or land your next big role? Disrupt is the must-attend event to make it all happen in person.
Build and scale your business faster
Disrupt is more than a startup launchpad — it’s a growth accelerator. Dive into sessions on scaling, sales, and leadership, and connect with the investors and tech experts who can help take your business to the next level.
Gain insights from today’s tech giants
Tap into the wisdom of founders and tech titans at Disrupt. From actionable tips to hard-won lessons, they’ll share what works (and what doesn’t) to guide you as you build your own path forward.
Disrupt 2025 featured speakers
Partner Sequoia Capital
CEO and Co-Founder Chime
General Partner Andreessen Horowitz
CEO Gil & Co
Founder Khosla Ventures
Co-Founder & CEO Box
Co-CEO Waymo
Founder, MIRROR, and CEO Board
Chief Technology Officer Microsoft
Chief Technology Officer Netflix
Captain of Moonshots X, The Moonshot Factory
Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Hugging Face
I’ve always thought, “What can I do that opens up possibilities?” I grew up in South Africa and went to an Afrikaans high school, and we didn’t speak English at home. But I pushed myself to go to an English-speaking university, and that opened up a door. Then I chose to work for McKinsey, because I thought it would open another door and maybe I’d get a chance to work overseas. I was reading about what was happening in Silicon Valley in the mid 90s, before I came to the U.S. Already, I’m starting to see the beginnings of the internet. Did I fathom how big it would be? Absolutely not. I didn’t know what venture capital was. I didn’t know that I would join a startup. I just had an intuition that I needed to be here. A friend of mine introduced me to Elon in 1999 and I joined PayPal. Then when Mike Moritz asked me to come interview at Sequoia, that was just another door opening. Where might this one lead? Whenever I interview people, I ask about those key moments in somebody’s life where they’ve made career decisions. And I think about companies in the same way—there are these crucible moments that have an enormous bearing on ultimate outcomes.
Roelof's Sessions
What Sequoia Sees Coming Next
As one of the most influential VCs of the modern era, Roelof Botha has seen it all; booms, busts, and billion-dollar breakout bets. In this fireside chat, the Sequoia Capital managing partner opens up about how today’s most ambitious founders are navigating AI, geopolitics, and a shifting capital landscape.
Chris Britt is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chime, a financial technology company founded on the premise that basic banking services should be helpful, easy, and free. Chime builds products that help everyday Americans achieve financial progress by addressing their most important financial needs: avoiding fees, accessing short term liquidity, building credit and establishing savings. Previously, Chris served in multiple roles at Green Dot, including Chief Product Officer and SVP of Corporate Development. Chris also held senior positions at Visa and ComScore. In 2024, Britt received the Tulane Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year Award. A Tulane graduate with a bachelor’s degree in history, he is a member of the Tulane Board of Directors. Britt also serves as a board member of CoachArt, a non-profit that connects chronically ill children with free lessons in the arts and athletics. At Chime, he founded and serves on the Board of Chime Scholars Foundation, pledging 1% of Chime Financial equity to fund college and other post secondary education for aspiring students.
Chris's Sessions
Building a Company That Lasts
Chris Britt knows how to build a company that withstands headwinds and seizes rare opportunities. As co-founder and CEO of Chime, he’s led the fintech from scrappy challenger to one of the few to go public in today’s tough market. In this conversation, Britt will share what it takes to scale with discipline, stay resilient through market shifts, and make the leap from private to public when so few manage it.
David George is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s Growth investing team and has led many of the firm’s growth investments. Prior to joining a16z, David spent seven years at General Atlantic leading and partnering on numerous consumer internet and enterprise software growth investments, including Airbnb, AppDynamics, Opendoor, Slack, and Uber. Previously, he was an investment associate at FFL Partners and an investment banking analyst for William Blair & Company. David graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the Board of Trustees and Investment Committee of Sacred Heart Schools-Atherton and the Advisory Council of the IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame, and sits on the board of the Foundation for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. David is a proud native of Kentucky, where he developed his love of basketball, bourbon, and horse racing.
David's Sessions
How Long Should a Startup Stay Private?
Startups today can grow to huge valuations, cash out their employees, and stay private longer than those of previous eras. But that also means that late-stage startups are facing a whole new set of rules. a16z’s David George unpacks the shifting VC landscape, what the next generation of scaled startups needs to know, and how capital is being deployed in an era of tighter money and higher expectations. From IPO windows to secondary markets to the evolving role of growth investors, this fireside chat goes deep on what it really takes to build enduring companies in today’s market and what’s coming next.
Elad Gil is a serial entrepreneur, operating executive, and investor/ advisor to private companies such as AirBnB, Airtable, Anduril, Coinbase, Figma, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Notion, Pinterest, Retool, Samsara, Square, Stripe, TripActions and others. He has invested in over 40 “unicorn” companies worth $1B or more, 30+ of them at seed or series A. He’s the author of the bestselling book “High Growth Handbook”, about organizational and financial scaling of breakout technology companies. Elad is Co-Founder and Chairman of Color, a digital health company focused on virtualized population care delivery. He is also involved with longevity biotech including BioAge and Spring Discovery. Elad’s an advisor to Electric Capital, a crypto hedge fund, and is involved with various crypto protocols and companies (Coinbase, Opensea, Anchorage, Bitwise, Filecoin, dYdX, IronFish…). Previously, Elad was VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, he also ran various product teams (Geo, Search). Elad joined Twitter via acquisition of MixerLabs, where he was co-founder and CEO. MixerLabs ran GeoAPI, an early developer-centric infrastructure product. Elad spent many years at Google, where he started the mobile team. He was involved with 3 acquisitions (including the Android team) and was the original product manager for Google Mobile Maps and Mobile Gmail. Prior to Google, Elad had product management and market seeding roles at a number of Silicon Valley companies. Elad worked at McKinsey & Co. and received a Ph.D. from MIT and BS and BA in Math from UCSD.
Elad's Sessions
A Conversation with Investor Extraordinaire Elad Gil
Before most of the world had experienced ChatGPT, Elad Gil had already written seed checks to startups like Perplexity, Character.AI, and Harvey. This on top of checks into, for example, Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Deel, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Notion, Opendoor, Pinterest, Rippling, Square, Stripe … you get the idea.
Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology fan. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, focused on impactful technology investments in software, AI, robotics, 3D printing, healthcare and more. Mr. Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. One of Mr. Khosla’s greatest passions is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology-based businesses. Mr. Khosla is driven by the desire to make a positive impact through technology to reinvent societal infrastructure and multiply resources. He is also passionate about Social Entrepreneurship. Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, New Delhi, a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Vinod's Sessions
No Filters: Vinod Khosla on the Future of Tech
Few investors speak as bluntly—or think as big—as Vinod Khosla. The Khosla Ventures founder has never shied away from calling out hype, doubling down on moonshots, and pushing founders to think beyond incremental progress. In this candid fireside chat, Khosla will share his unvarnished views on AI, climate, healthcare, and the next generation of transformational startups—and what entrepreneurs need to hear (not just what they want to hear) to build enduring companies in turbulent times.
Aaron Levie is Chief Executive Officer, Cofounder at Box, which he launched in 2005 with CFO and cofounder Dylan Smith. He is the visionary behind the Box product and platform strategy, incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Aaron leads the company in its mission to transform the way people and businesses work so they can achieve their greatest ambitions. He has served on the Board of Directors since April 2005. Aaron attended the University of Southern California from 2003 to 2005 before leaving to found Box.
Aaron's Sessions
Survive, Scale, Reinvent: Lessons from a Cloud OG
Aaron Levie built Box before cloud was cool and the company is still thriving while competitors have come and gone. Known for his sharp takes and startup instincts, Levie joins us to unpack how to keep innovating inside a public company, the possibilities AI and agents bring to enterprise software, and why reinvention is the name of the game in tech right now. Expect real talk and a playbook for building companies that last in the world of AI.
Tekedra N. Mawakana is the co-CEO of Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company. As co-CEO, Tekedra oversees the company’s strategy for the wide adoption of the Waymo Driver. She boasts 20+ years of experience advising consumer technology companies to advance their business interests globally. Tekedra currently serves on the Board of Directors for Intuit and the Advisory Council for Boom Technology. She is a social impact-focused angel investor and an Advisor and LP with the Operator Collective.
Tekedra's Sessions
The Self-Driving Reality Check
Autonomous vehicles have been “just around the corner” for years—until now. Tekedra Mawakana, Co-CEO of Waymo, takes the Disrupt Stage to talk about where AVs actually stand, what it’s taken to get to real deployments, and why the race isn’t just about tech, it’s about trust. From regulation to rider experience to competition with Tesla and Tesla-adjacent hype, this conversation gets real about what’s next in mobility.
Brynn Putnam is the founder and CEO of Board, a first-ever face-to-face game console launching Fall 2025. She is the former CEO of Mirror, a connected fitness start-up that launched in 2018 and was acquired in 2020 for $500 million by lululemon, representing its first acquisition. MIRROR was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions and Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups. Brynn has been recognized by Inc’s 30 under 30, Crain’s 40 under 40, and EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Brynn was a professional ballerina with The New York City Ballet and founder of the renowned NYC fitness chain Refine Method. Brynn has a B.A. from Harvard College and is a member of New York City Ballet’s Board of Directors. Brynn is a native New Yorker and lives on the UES with her husband, Kevin Thau, and two children, George and Agnes.
Brynn's Sessions
From MIRROR to What’s Next: Brynn Putnam Returns to Disrupt
In 2018, Brynn Putnam unveiled MIRROR on the Disrupt stage, launching one of the most talked-about connected fitness products of the decade — and ultimately selling it to Lululemon for $500 million. Now she’s back, and she’s chosen TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 to reveal her brand-new, never-before-seen product. Join us for an exclusive conversation with Putnam as she shares her founder journey, the lessons she’s carried forward, and to get a first look and live demonstration of her new product.
Kevin Scott
Chief Technology Officer, MicrosoftKevin Scott is Microsoft’s chief technology officer. He is an innovative leader driving the technical vision to achieve Microsoft’s mission, and is passionate about creating technologies that benefit everyone. He focuses on helping make the company an exceptional place for engineers, developers and researchers to work and learn. Scott’s 20-year career in technology spans both academia and industry as researcher, engineer and leader. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was senior vice president of engineering and operations at LinkedIn, where he helped build the technology and engineering teams and led the company through an IPO and six years of rapid growth. Earlier in his career, he oversaw mobile ads engineering at Google, including the integration of Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob. At AdMob, Scott was responsible for engineering and operations for the world’s leading platform for mobile monetization. Before joining AdMob, Scott held numerous leadership positions at Google in search and ads engineering and helped with the company’s early efforts establishing remote engineering centers. Scott is the host of the podcast Behind the Tech , which features interviews with technology heroes who have helped create the tech industry of today. He also authored the book “ Reprogramming the American Dream ,” which explores how artificial intelligence can be realistically used to serve the interests of everyone, not just the privileged few. As co-inventor on several patents around search and information extraction, he has also authored several publications on dynamic binary rewriting that collectively have been cited hundreds of times in other scholarly research. He has received a Google Founder’s Award, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship and an ACM Recognition of Service Award. He is a member of the board of directors of Shopify, an adviser to several Silicon Valley startups, an active angel investor, the founder of the non-profit organization Behind the Tech, an emeritus of the Anita Borg Institute’s board of trustees and a trustee of The Scott Foundation. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Harvard’s Technology for Public Purpose (TAPP) program. Scott holds an M.S. in computer science from Wake Forest University, a B.S. in computer science from Lynchburg College, and has completed most of his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Virginia.
Kevin's Sessions
Inside Microsoft’s AI Bet with CTO Kevin Scott
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott joins the Disrupt Stage to unpack the company’s boldest AI moves yet, from its OpenAI partnership to reshaping enterprise and consumer products. He’ll share where Microsoft sees the biggest opportunities, how startups should think about building on its platforms, and what comes next in the race to define the future of AI.
Elizabeth Stone was named Chief Technology Officer in October 2023. She joined Netflix in 2020, serving first as Vice President, Product Data Science & Engineering and more recently as Vice President, Data & Insights. Elizabeth previously worked in finance as a trader at Merrill Lynch and economist at Analysis Group before transitioning to the tech industry, where she served as Chief Operating Officer at Nuna and Vice President, Science at Lyft. She is a graduate of MIT and Stanford University.
Elizabeth's Sessions
What's Next for Netflix and for Streaming Itself
As CTO of Netflix, Elizabeth Stone is steering the future of entertainment for hundreds of millions of users. In this fireside chat, Stone will break down how Netflix is evolving its product and technology strategy—from personalized discovery to global growth, from ad tiers to gaming. We’ll explore how Netflix is adapting to a shifting content landscape, what it means to innovate at massive scale, and what design surprises Netflix has up its sleeve. For anyone building consumer experiences, this will be a masterclass.
Dr. Astro Teller currently oversees X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory for building breakthrough technologies and businesses designed to help tackle huge problems in the world. Before joining Google / Alphabet, Astro was the co-founding CEO of Cerebellum Capital, Inc, an investment management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning. Before his tenure as a business executive, Dr. Teller taught at Stanford University and was an engineer and researcher for Phoenix Laser Technologies, Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems, and The Carnegie Group Incorporated. Dr. Teller holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University, Masters of Science in symbolic and heuristic computation, also from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the Hertz fellowship.
Astro's Sessions
Moonshots, AI, and the Future of Alphabet
From self-driving cars to internet balloons to AI-fueled breakthroughs, Astro Teller leads the lab where Alphabet incubates the nearly impossible. In this rare Disrupt stage appearance, he shares what’s actually working inside X, why “failing fast” isn’t just a mantra, and how moonshots may evolve in the AI age. If you think your startup is ambitious, wait until you hear what he’s launching next.
Thomas Wolf is co-founder and Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Hugging Face where he has been at the inception of the open-source, educational and moonshot efforts. Thomas enjoys creating open-source software that makes complex research, models and datasets widely accessible (for instance by creating the Hugging Face Transformers and Datasets libraries). When he’s not building OSS libraries, he can be found pushing for open-science in research in AI/ML, trying to lower the gap between academia and industrial labs through projects like the BigScience Workshop on Large Language Models (LLM), which led to the BLOOM experiments, model and dataset. His current research interests are directed toward the future of AI and future moonshot. He also enjoys writing and producing educational content on AI, ML and NLP, including writing the reference book “Natural Language Processing with Transformers” published at O’Reilly with amazing co-authors, “The Ultra-scale Playbook” teaching large-scale AI trainings, writing (not often enough) in his blog and recording (also not often enough) educational videos like The Future of Natural Language Processing.
Thomas's Sessions
Shaping the AI Stack with Hugging Face
From models and datasets to ethics and infrastructure, Hugging Face is helping define what building responsibly with AI actually looks like. Co-founder and CSO Thomas Wolf joins us to talk about the shifting power dynamics in the AI ecosystem, the rise of community-led innovation, and what it takes to stay open while moving fast.
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