Anthropic and OpenAI are set to headline the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, joining industry leaders for a series of sessions focused on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way startups build, sell, secure, and scale. The AI Stage, presented by Google for Startups, returns to tackle what has been the community’s hottest topic for the past several years.
The event runs October 13–15 in San Francisco at Moscone Center. This year’s programming centers on the business models AI is rewriting, the unsolved security gaps facing enterprises, and the entirely new job categories the technology has created. Sessions will address practical questions founders face right now, including how to price AI products as models become commoditized, why agent security must be rebuilt from the infrastructure level, and what a go-to-market strategy looks like in an AI-native world.
What Anthropic and OpenAI Will Cover
Cat de Jong, Head of Applied AI at Anthropic, will lead a session on what enterprise deployment of Claude actually looks like once it moves beyond the pilot stage. Working directly with organizations that put Claude into their most critical workflows, she sees patterns that rarely surface publicly: where deployments succeed immediately, where they stall, and what separates companies extracting real value from those still running trials eighteen months in.
Tara Seshan, Head of Productivity at OpenAI, will examine what building AI-native means in practice. Her session traces how AI collapsed the traditional go-to-market stack and created a new discipline in its place. Two years ago, GTM engineering did not exist. Today it ranks among the fastest-growing roles in the industry, with independent practitioners building million-dollar businesses.
Enterprise and Agent Security in Focus
Security takes a prominent role across the lineup. Arsalan Tavakoli, Co-founder and SVP of Field Engineering at Databricks, will break down what enterprise AI security requires in 2026. With AI now making autonomous decisions inside highly sensitive enterprise systems at a speed traditional frameworks were not built for, his session covers observability, governance, and the architecture that separates trustworthy deployments from risky ones.
A separate session tackles the agent security problem directly. Agentic AI is powerful but was never designed with security in mind, and enterprises adopting it are learning to rebuild the fundamentals of cybersecurity from scratch. The discussion promises a candid, technical look at what agent security demands at the infrastructure level.
Ticket Pricing and Details
The current pricing window is closing soon, giving attendees a limited window to save up to EUR 172 on registration. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 takes place October 13–15 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, with additional speaker and session announcements still to come.
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Image: techcrunch.com
