The hot issues for CIOs at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

The TechCrunch Disrupt conference has long provided valuable insights to and about startups and their investors — but CIOs can learn by talking with startups too, and there’s plenty to learn about at this year’s event.

One of the central themes at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is artificial intelligence, which presents both an opportunity and a threat to CIOs. Sessions will tackle agentic AI, training AI models, and other topics of relevance to IT organizations large and small, including the perennial challenge of scaling.

Here’s a look at some of Disrupt’s overarching themes, and the sessions where CIOs can learn about them.

Agentic AI

Agentic AI promises to transform enterprises; but just how does it work and where can it prove most useful?

A Tuesday session “The invisible AI revolution” will dive into these questions and explore how agentic AI is fundamentally changing IT workflows. Founders from startup Super.AI will dive into how AI is being used across various sectors and its impact on the bottom line, a fundamental concern for CIOs.

Also on Tuesday, Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner will lead the breakout session “From web pages to autonomous agents.” Chatbots and AI agents must be able to reason with live, structured web data, which requires building strong linkages between today’s web and tomorrow’s data infrastructure.

Training AI models

Training remains one of the most critical, yet misunderstood, components of the AI lifecycle.

TechCrunch Disrupt sessions will address this topic head-on, with sessions including “The post-training revolution: How reinforcement learning is upending the AI infra stack” (on Tuesday with CoreWeave) and “How to train your model: Taming AI agents without breaking them” (also on Tuesday, with Anthropic).

CIOs will get a close-up look at how model training, reinforcement learning, and safety tuning are evolving to support innovation and reliability. Experts will compare general-purpose and specialized models, explore crowdsource tools, and delve into red-teaming, model steering techniques, and constitutional AI practices (that is, creating “harmless” models through iterative self-development).

Scaling

Scaling matters, whatever size you’re starting from. Several TechCrunch Disrupt sessions will tackle the question of scale and what it really takes to move from prototype to production.

For instance, Fireworks AI’s Tuesday session, “Prototyping, tuning and scaling gen AI applications with open models,” will offer insights on choosing the right models, knowing when to run evals, and scaling without breaking latency or budgets.

Also on Tuesday, Reddit will share its approach to scaling search and machine learning (ML) while balancing safety, mitigating bias, and setting user expectations around AI. And, Bill Gates’ entrepreneur daughter Phoebe Gates will talk scaling consumer AI with her Phia consumer AI brand in the Tuesday session, “Storming the gates.”

Personal branding

And talking of branding, sure, you already tell your company’s employees what’s going on in IT — but it’s probably some impersonal corporate announcement. Maybe putting your personal brand front and center could carry the message better. In Tuesdays session, “Tim Cook has more followers than Apple,” execs from EllieMD and UP10 Media will explain why executive-led storytelling is so important, because people follow people, not organizations.

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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