What CIOs can learn at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

AI is arguably one of the most disruptive forces for enterprises since the advent of cloud computing, making it a natural focus for many of the presentations at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. The event, in San Francisco from Oct. 27 to 29, offers CIOs opportunities to gain valuable insights into the latest technologies and strategies from fellow C-suites executives, AI builders, and more.

And with CIOs likely to be on the hook for business-led AI failures, it’s worth taking any opportunity to learn how early adopters of the technology are courting, or avoiding, trouble.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is first and foremost an event for startups — but, as we’ve seen, CIOs can gain a lot from talking with founders, both in the early stages of a startup’s existence, and as they grow.

This year’s event will provide technical deep dives, audience-led experiments, and numerous breakout sessions on everything AI, from cutting-edge strategies to real-world execution to industry-specific lessons learned. Here’s our pick of the sessions for CIO attendees.

Strategic imperatives for enterprise leaders

Monday’s opening keynote, “The Untapped Opportunity Hidden in Business Workflows,” brings together leaders from Signal, Quickbase and Tkxel to look at opportunities in the application layer for embedding intelligence into stalling processes, offering real-world use cases to give enterprises a competitive edge.

We’ve all seen some of the most obvious impacts of AI in IT, but on Tuesday there’ll be a discussion of “The Invisible AI Revolution,” how agentic AI is quietly but fundamentally changing work across different industries. Executives from Super.AI will dive into how the technology is rewiring how some sectors operate, creating all-new areas for innovation in IT.

From the first entry of generative AI into the enterprise, vendors have emphasized the need for a “human in the loop” to keep things on the rails — or to take the blame. But on Wednesday Head AI’s co-founder will throw away the safety net for what’s billed as a “$1M AI Trust Bet”: Audience members will play a key role in a live experiment based on trust as he explores how agents work autonomously and what can happen when brands blindly entrust their budgets to AI.

Technical lessons from industry leaders

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 also offers the opportunity to hear from key technology experts at the top of the industry.

In Monday afternoon’s “Moonshots, AI, and the Future of Alphabet,” Astro Teller, captain of moonshots (apparently his actual job title) will discuss what’s working inside Google’s innovation engine, why failing fast isn’t just a mantra, and how moonshots may evolve in the AI age.

“Inside Microsoft’s AI Bet with CTO Kevin Scott” on Tuesday morning ought to be self-explanatory. He will discuss how AI is reshaping the Microsoft’s enterprise products, the company’s partnership with OpenAI, and where he sees the biggest AI opportunities.

Right after Monday’s keynote on improving business processes with AI, GitHub Copilot product manager Tim Rogers will draw on the company’s internal usage to look at how AI can do the same thing for the software development process in “From Vibes to Velocity: How AI Tools Can Help You Achieve Your Development Goals.”.

The aptly named Kyla Guru, head of model cyber safety at Anthropic, will give two talks (on Monday and Tuesday mornings) entitled “How to Train Your Model: Taming AI Agents Without Breaking Them.” She’ll explore the fundamental tension between helpfulness and harmfulness when training AI models, examining constitutional AI (training useful, harmless AI through self-improvement), red-teaming strategies, model steering techniques, crowdsourcing tools, and important frameworks for balancing safety constraints and performance goals.

There are also two opportunities to hear Meta Superintelligence Labs Director Rohit Patel address challenges to real-world AI applications in “AI Evaluation 101” on Wednesday morning. He will break down how neural networks generate language and compare automated, judge-based and human-rated methods for assessing performance.

Wednesday is also when Google Cloud CTO Will Grannis will talk about how he’s getting the cloud ready for agentic AI, and how it can be used to compete in everything from payments to cybersecurity.

He’s followed by Hugging Face’s co-founder and chief science officer, Thomas Wolf, who will discuss the importance of community-led innovation, open frameworks, and building AI responsibly.

60 must-watch AI innovators

So much for the big guns: How are up-and-coming developers going to change the way enterprises work with AI? That’s on the agenda right after lunch on Tuesday, when Shay Grinfield of Greenfield Parteners and Renen Hallak of Vast Data give their run-down on 60 AI disruptors they believe will define AI’s future.

Other conference sessions offer real-world AI learnings from vertical deployments in construction, manufacturing, logistics, banking, fintech, healthcare, and even national security. (Send your CISO to that one on Monday afternoon: “AI at the Bring: Strategic Playbook for National Security.”)

Check out the event website for more information or to register or purchase tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, which runs October 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

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