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At TechCrunch Disrupt, 19-year-old Zach Yadegari explained how his calorie-tracking app Cal AI grew by paying a large number of influencers to post about the product, negotiating payouts tied to audience reach. He said the company, founded in 2024, generated over $30 million in revenue in two years before being acquired by MyFitness in March for an undisclosed sum.
Intero Biosystems, a Denver-based startup spun out of the University of Michigan, won the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The company, founded by Charlie Childs and Madeline Eiken, makes lab-grown human intestinal 'organoids' sold under the product name GastroScreen to test how drugs and other compounds affect the body. Apate, an Australian startup using AI agents to combat scammers, took runner-up honors among five finalists selected from 20 competitors.
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Amazon SVP of Devices Panos Panay told founders that failure is a necessary part of building successful products. He pointed to Microsoft's Surface RT tablet, which led to a nearly $1 billion write-down during his tenure there, as an example of a major failure he later learned from.
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Amazon devices chief Panos Panay described a shift from app-driven smartphone use toward ambient AI devices that work passively in the background. He tied this vision to Amazon's newly launched Bee wearables, which record and process audio in real time to surface reminders and insights without storing raw conversations, using encryption keys controlled by the user's device.
Bluesky executives CEO Toni Schneider and COO Rose Wang said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the company will roll out payment tools in coming months, letting users financially support posts and activity they see on the network. The feature is intended to work across Bluesky and other apps built on its underlying protocol, not just within Bluesky's own app.
Bluesky announced at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 that its experimental Attie platform now lets users build websites, games, quizzes and polls using AI, not just custom social feeds as before. CEO Toni Schneider described it as 'vibe coding' for communities, with creations tied to users' AT Protocol identities and built using either a user's own AI model or open-weight options.
Bluesky's Attie AI tool, which debuted earlier this year as a way to build custom feeds, has been expanded to let users create small social apps such as games, polls, and dashboards. These apps can then be shared as standalone websites. CEO Toni Schneider described the tool at TechCrunch Disrupt as a form of 'social vibe coding' for communities.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the company plans to eventually allow AI agents from outside companies, such as Anthropic, to operate within its vehicles' software. Rivian already runs its own in-house voice assistant and agentic framework, which routes driver requests to either local or cloud-based models depending on complexity, and can access external apps like Google Calendar. Scaringe gave no timeline for the expansion and said Rivian would share more details at its December 'AI & Autonomy Day' event.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 held its third and final day at Moscone West, drawing over 10,000 founders, investors and technology leaders. The day included AI, fundraising and growth-strategy sessions, a Startup Battlefield component, and an Expo Hall featuring more than 320 exhibiting startups.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Ricursive Intelligence founders Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini described their startup's approach to using AI systems that design computer chips, learn from each design iteration, and improve future designs. The pair, who previously built Google's AlphaChip system that produced unconventional layouts like a 'donut-shaped' circuit arrangement, said their goal is to automate and speed up chip design to make chips more efficient.
Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley publicly defended his company's license-plate camera and surveillance systems at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, arguing that halting the technology's expansion would hinder crime accountability. He addressed criticism that has led some cities to cancel contracts and the company to lay off staff, but largely responded with anecdotes from police chiefs rather than direct solutions to privacy concerns.
TechCrunch has selected five startups to compete in the Startup Battlefield finals at Disrupt 2026, chosen from 20 companies that pitched across four categories: space and physical AI, energy and manufacturing, health tech and life sciences, and enterprise and security. The finalists include Apate.ai, which uses AI agents to bait scammers; Flox Intelligence, which builds a sensor-based wildlife deterrent system; and Intero Biosystems, which grows lab organoids that mimic human intestines for drug testing. The finals take place the following day, with a judging panel awarding the winner a $100,000 equity-free prize and the Startup Battlefield Cup.