Startup MyMonthlyCar, founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs Igor Dobrianskyi, Kostiantyn Gitko and Vadym Zotov, has built an online platform letting dealerships rent out used cars on a month-to-month basis, with an option for renters to eventually buy. The company charges no listing fees but takes a 10% cut from both dealers and customers on each transaction, and has been selected for TechCrunch Disrupt's 2026 Startup Battlefield 200 cohort.
Cerebras Systems co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman is scheduled to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 for a session titled 'Can AI Keep Scaling?', addressing rising demand for compute, energy and infrastructure. Cerebras builds wafer-scale AI chips as an alternative to conventional chip architectures, raised $5.5 billion in its May IPO, signed a multiyear deal with OpenAI for 750 megawatts of systems through 2026-2028, and launched its CS-4 hardware in August.
TechCrunch is closing exhibit bookings for Disrupt 2026 this Friday, October 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT. The conference runs October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, and exhibitors get a $12,500 package including a table, 10 team passes, lead-generation tools, and sponsor branding.
TechCrunch has announced a lineup of Side Events accompanying Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, held alongside the main conference at Moscone West. Organizers include KOTRA, which is hosting a Korea-US networking night and offering complimentary Expo+ passes to qualified applicants, WayFounder's Born2Global founder networking event featuring 18 Korean startups, and Enterprise Ireland's returning 'Irish Shark Tank' event. SafetyWing and Descope are also listed as new event hosts for 2026.
Konrad Zieliński, who lost his voice to cancer and later completed a PhD on bionic systems for laryngectomees, founded Uhura Bionics in 2023. The startup makes two non-surgical wearable devices, including a premium model called Whitney, designed to let users speak with emotional inflection rather than a flat robotic tone. Uhura will present at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026's Battlefield 200 next month.
Anthropic's Cat de Jong will join Gamma's Grant Lee and a Clay representative on the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 for a session on how enterprises deploy AI in practice. De Jong, who works directly with enterprise Claude deployments, will discuss where implementations succeed or stall after the initial rollout.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion, two companies racing to commercialize fusion energy, will have their leaders speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. CFS co-founder Brandon Sorbom and Helion CEO David Kirtley will discuss progress on their respective projects: CFS's SPARC demonstration machine leading to its ARC power plant, and Helion's Orion plant, which aims to deliver 50 megawatts of electricity to Microsoft starting in 2028. CFS has also applied to join the PJM Interconnection wholesale electricity market and raised $1 billion in July, bringing its total funding to $4 billion.
TechCrunch announced five additional judges for its Startup Battlefield 200 competition at Disrupt 2026, bringing the total revealed so far to 20. The 200 selected startups will exhibit and pitch at the event, with judges narrowing the field toward finalists who compete for a $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup.
TechCrunch is closing exhibit table bookings for its Disrupt 2026 conference on Friday, October 2, at 11:59 p.m. PT, after which no further reservations will be accepted. The event runs October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco and is expected to draw more than 10,000 founders, investors and tech leaders. Exhibit packages include a branded table, ten team passes, lead-generation tools, and app and website branding.
Muju Earth has built the Aeropod, a fingernail-sized device farmers plant alongside seeds that bursts open from soil temperature, pressure and moisture to loosen compacted soil without machinery. The startup, founded by Ifeoluwa Afolayan and Wangyang Hu at Imperial College London, says the device can match tilling's results at roughly a quarter of the cost. Muju Earth is running paid field trials with nine UK onion farmers this fall and will present at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield in October.
Ricursive Intelligence co-founders Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini will speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 about their startup's AI system for designing computer chips. The company aims to cut chip design time from two to three years down to weeks, building on the pair's earlier work co-leading Google's AlphaChip project, which helped design several generations of Google's Tensor Processing Units.
TechCrunch is selling a discounted $75 Expo+ Pass to its Disrupt 2026 conference for people who have been laid off, capped at the first 100 qualifying buyers or until the event opens on October 13 at 8 a.m. PT. The pass grants access to the Expo Hall at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 13-15, where over 10,000 attendees and 300+ startups are expected.
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