GoKawiilThere’s a version of a tech conference where you fly somewhere expensive, sit through panels, collect business cards you’ll never follow up on, and fly home. SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 was deliberately designed to be the opposite of that.
When 60,000 attendees descend on Tokyo Big Sight April 27–29, the headline numbers are hard to ignore: 750 startup exhibitors, 151 sessions, city leaders from 49 countries. But the stat that tells you what kind of event this actually is? It’s 10,000 facilitated business meetings — brokered, booked, and tracked before most attendees even land.
The infrastructure of deal-making
SusHi Tech’s official app is less event guide and more matchmaking engine. Before the conference opens, attendees register their profile and describe what they’re looking for. The app’s AI surfaces recommendations, opens a direct message channel, and lets you pre-book one of the venue’s expanded meeting spaces. On the floor, QR code business card exchange replaces the fumbling-for-a-card moment. It’s a small thing that signals a larger philosophy: Remove the friction between the people who should be talking.
That deal-making ethos extends to the startup pitch competition. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield program manager, Isabelle Johannessen, will select one standout startup well-suited to the North American market from the semifinalists to advance to the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200, a launchpad to one of the industry’s most prestigious stages.
Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images
Corporates are pitching to startups — not the other way around
One of SusHi Tech’s more interesting structural choices is the reverse pitch format. Rather than startups lining up to impress big companies, corporates and city governments take the stage to present their unsolved challenges and invite startups to propose solutions.
This year, Moreton Bay and Rome are both running reverse pitch sessions — essentially issuing public RFPs to a global startup audience. On the corporate side, 62 partner companies — including Sony, Google, Microsoft, and Mizuho — are hosting dedicated Open Innovation exhibits and sessions, actively hunting for collaborators. Twelve domain-specific clusters spanning logistics, life sciences, railways, and climate tech are also exhibiting for the first time, each looking to co-create with startups rather than simply observe them.
750 startups, 400 of them international
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