Vinyl has survived cassettes, CDs, Napster, the iPod, Spotify and several decades of people confidently predicting its imminent death because records continue to provide something streaming cannot: ownership, permanence, large artwork, ritual and a physical connection to music that someone presumably cared enough to write, perform, record and master. Artificial intelligence has apparently looked at all of that and decided it needed a piece of the action.

Suno is preparing to launch Suno Vinyl, a service that will turn music generated through its AI platform into personalized 12 inch records. Users will be able to select up to 46 minutes of music, create custom artwork and labels, and have the finished record pressed and shipped to their door for an estimated $45 plus shipping. The service is not yet live, although Suno is accepting users for its waitlist, which raises the fairly obvious question of who exactly has been sitting around waiting for this particular collision between generative AI and physical media.

That does not make Suno Vinyl an irrelevant story. Quite the opposite. Suno has become one of the largest generative music platforms in the world, raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is now operating at a scale where its decisions can influence how AI generated music is created, distributed and monetized. What makes this announcement interesting is not that somebody can turn an AI song into a record; it is that AI generated music is rapidly acquiring the same commercial infrastructure as conventional recorded music, including licensing, distribution, royalty policies, copyright disputes and now physical products.

Whether it deserves all of that is another question.

Calling It “Vinyl” Requires an Asterisk

There is one detail getting somewhat lost in the excitement: Suno calls the service Suno Vinyl, but the actual 12 inch record is manufactured from black PETG rather than conventional PVC vinyl. Suno describes the material as environmentally friendly and says the records are genuinely pressed rather than novelty lathe cuts, with full color printed sleeves, custom labels and audio taken from the user’s final mix.

That is fine as far as it goes, but if you are charging roughly $45 for something intended to spend its life on a turntable, we would like considerably more information. Suno currently says nothing meaningful about the pressing plant, mastering process, record weight, manufacturing tolerances or whether the supplied file receives any additional preparation before being committed to the physical format. The company promises “high quality audio,” but without any technical context that phrase carries about as much useful information as “premium sound” on the side of a Bluetooth speaker box.

Those omissions would be troubling if Suno were positioning this as an audiophile product, although there is little indication that it is. The target customer is not likely to be comparing cutter heads, lacquer sources or different pressings of A Love Supreme before deciding whether a PETG copy of an AI generated ska song about the family Labradoodle deserves shelf space.

$45 Buys a Lot of Actual Music

The pricing becomes more amusing when placed beside what traditional record buyers can purchase for the same money. We recently reviewed Rhino High Fidelity’s new edition of Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly, an all analog release cut by Kevin Gray and produced specifically for listeners who care about sound quality, and that record sells for $39.98.

Suno estimates about $45 plus shipping for a personalized PETG pressing of whatever its software generated after somebody typed a sufficiently elaborate prompt. The comparison is not entirely fair because Rhino can manufacture an established title in quantity while Suno is offering personalized, low volume production with custom artwork and packaging, but consumers do not make purchasing decisions inside an accounting seminar. They have $45, and that amount buys excellent new releases, several used records, a stack of inexpensive CDs or, depending on your level of restraint inside a record shop, the first twelve minutes of what eventually becomes a $140 purchase.

That is why Suno Vinyl makes almost no sense as a value proposition for conventional music collectors. It is not really competing with Rhino, Blue Note, Craft Recordings, Analogue Productions or any of the labels serving the vinyl enthusiast market. It is competing with personalized gifts, novelty merchandise and the emotional satisfaction of taking something that existed only on a screen and turning it into an object.

What Problem Is Suno Vinyl Solving?

Generative AI has removed almost every traditional obstacle involved in creating something resembling a finished song. You do not necessarily need musicians, a recording studio, microphones, instruments, engineers or enough musical ability to survive “Hot Cross Buns” on a recorder because software can produce something in seconds that has vocals, instrumentation, structure and a finished mix.

If the result is terrible, you generate another one. If that is terrible, you generate ten more. Deezer recently reported receiving tens of thousands of fully AI generated tracks every day, which underscores one of the central contradictions of this entire market: we can now create music much faster than anybody can realistically consume it.

Against that backdrop, Suno’s decision to turn one of those infinitely reproducible digital files into a scarce physical object is almost comically logical. The technology creates abundance, while the record creates the appearance of permanence and scarcity. You have to admire the capitalism involved because Suno has effectively identified a way to assign physical and emotional weight to a product whose defining advantage is that it can be generated endlessly and almost instantly.

That may ultimately be the real appeal.

Vinyl Means Something AI Music Does Not

The resilience of physical music has very little to do with consumers suddenly forgetting how convenient streaming is. Hundreds of millions of people pay for streaming subscriptions precisely because instant access to almost everything is useful, yet vinyl and CDs continue selling because ownership still means something when the rest of our media lives increasingly exist behind subscriptions, licensing agreements and corporate servers.

People stream because it is convenient; they buy records because some music matters enough to own. A copy of Kind of Blue, London Calling, Super Fly or Songs in the Key of Life does not become meaningful because somebody pressed it onto plastic. The record exists because the music already demonstrated enough cultural or personal value that listeners wanted to keep it, display it and return to it.

Suno reverses that relationship. Pressing the music onto a record can become part of the process of convincing ourselves that the thing mattered in the first place, which is a considerably stranger proposition. Someone may create a song about a deceased parent, a wedding, a child’s birth or another deeply personal experience and treasure the resulting object, and there is nothing artificial about that emotional reaction. But Suno also promotes birthday songs, anniversary tracks and inside jokes as likely applications, which tells us far more about the real market than any grand claim about reshaping music creation.

So Who Is This Actually For?

Suno Vinyl is primarily personalized merchandise, and viewed through that lens the concept begins to make considerably more sense. It is for the person who generates a birthday song for Dad and thinks presenting him with an actual record will be funnier and more memorable than texting him a link. It is for couples who want their AI generated anniversary anthem sitting beside the wedding photographs, and for people creating fictional bands, joke albums and personal projects who simply want to hold the finished result in their hands.

There is also a more legitimate creative use case for musicians who employ AI as one tool inside a larger process involving their own lyrics, vocals, instrumentation or production. AI assisted music and fully AI generated music are not the same thing, something we have argued repeatedly in our recent coverage, and a physical pressing of a genuinely collaborative project may have real personal or promotional value.

But none of that turns Suno Vinyl into the next meaningful development in analog playback. For most customers, it is closer to a custom photo mug that happens to spin at 33⅓ rpm, which is not necessarily an insult because personalized products can be fun. It merely means the thing belongs in a very different conversation from an AAA Blue Note reissue, and nobody should expect Kevin Gray to arrive with tasting notes.

The Copyright Mess Now Comes With a Record Sleeve

The physical format also makes the unresolved legal and ethical issues surrounding AI music feel considerably more tangible. Suno says users who create songs while subscribed to its paid plans are considered the owners of those songs and retain commercial usage rights, while material created on its free tier is intended for noncommercial use. The company also acknowledges that ownership of a generated recording does not necessarily mean the work qualifies for copyright protection, particularly when the human contribution is limited.

That distinction becomes harder to ignore when the thing arrives in the mail with your name printed on the jacket.

Suno’s relationship with the traditional music business remains equally complicated. Warner Music Group settled its dispute with Suno and entered into a partnership intended to support future licensed models and new AI experiences involving participating artists, yet litigation involving AI training and copyrighted material continues elsewhere. A Munich court recently ruled against Suno in a case brought by German rights organization GEMA, illustrating just how unsettled the legal framework remains even as companies race ahead with new commercial products.

That is why Suno Vinyl deserves more attention than a goofy product announcement normally would. AI music now has creation platforms, label partnerships, licensing agreements, streaming distribution, royalty policies, chart debates, copyright litigation and physical records. It has managed to recreate almost the entire music industry with remarkable speed, although nobody has yet announced an AI tour manager capable of losing the band’s cash somewhere outside Cleveland.

Physical Media Deserves Better Than More Content

We have spent much of 2026 covering the continued strength of physical music because records and CDs provide something increasingly valuable in an era of rented digital access. They offer ownership, preserve particular masterings and editions, support artists and labels, and encourage listeners to engage with albums rather than allowing an algorithm to pour background audio through the room until everyone goes to bed.

That is what makes Suno Vinyl simultaneously fascinating and faintly ridiculous. The vinyl revival has been driven partly by listeners deciding that certain music deserves more attention, more permanence and more emotional investment than another disposable stream, while Suno’s technology is built around making the creation of additional music almost frictionless. Those ideas are fundamentally at odds, and putting one inside the packaging of the other does not solve the contradiction so much as give it a rather handsome record sleeve.

The Bottom Line

Suno Vinyl is an important story attached to a profoundly unnecessary product. The company plans to let users take up to 46 minutes of music from their Suno libraries, add custom artwork and receive a genuinely pressed 12 inch PETG record for approximately $45 plus shipping, but there is almost no audiophile reason to care. Suno has disclosed very little about the mastering or manufacturing process, the record is PETG rather than conventional PVC vinyl, and the same amount of money can buy exceptionally well produced recordings containing music written, performed and engineered by human beings.

That comparison is ultimately beside the point because audiophiles are not really the customer. Suno Vinyl is a keepsake, novelty item, personalized gift and piece of creator merchandise designed for people who want something generated on a screen to feel more permanent, and that is precisely why the product matters even if most serious record collectors would never consider buying one.

AI companies have become remarkably good at generating limitless quantities of content. Suno is now testing whether putting some of that content into a physical object can make consumers assign it greater emotional and monetary value, and perhaps it can. If the next phase involves AI generated yacht rock pressed onto PETG, numbered 1 of 1 and listed on Discogs for $175, we may finally have reached the runout groove.

For more information: vinyl.suno.com

Related Reading:

The Trump administration is paying another $1.2 billion to cancel an offshore wind lease, this time to German utility RWE. 

The energy company said in an announcement that the wind farms would have been built off the coasts of California, Louisiana, and New York. Instead, RWE will spend $900 million to buy a small stake in a Louisiana liquid natural gas export terminal.

The New York wind farm would have generated more than 3 gigawatts, according to Heatmap News.

The remaining $300 million will go toward buying natural gas turbines to power 15 peaking power plants around the country. Peaking power plants are among the most expensive and most polluting natural gas power plants to operate. It’s unclear when those will be completed — there’s currently a backlog for new turbines stretching into the early 2030s.

RWE isn’t backing off its offshore wind investments elsewhere, though. The company said it bought 6.9 gigawatts of capacity in the U.K.’s recent auction.

The Trump administration has paid $3.93 billion for the 12 leases it has coaxed developers into abandoning.

Bill Swearingen has spent the past year running largely the same test, over and over again. The goal was to produce a computer-generated pattern that could block the surveillance cameras lining America’s streets from detecting it.

Some 31 million tests later, Swearingen says he can now produce patterns on-demand that, when applied to clothing and objects, prevent some of the most commonly deployed license plate readers and surveillance cameras from detecting whatever the pattern covers, from people to vehicles.

His project, which he calls noRecognition, allows people to escape the automatic detection and algorithmic surveillance used across the U.S. and beyond.

In recent years, surveillance cameras have been supercharged with the ability to detect what is happening in the footage being recorded, from tracking the license plates of speeding vehicles to using facial recognition to identify suspected criminals, albeit with mixed success and sometimes terrifying results. The detection algorithms that power most surveillance cameras today can sift through vast amounts of footage, allowing law enforcement to pick out activity of interest, akin to pulling a needle out of a haystack.

Swearingen’s computer-generated patterns do not block surveillance cameras from recording video footage. Instead, they scramble the camera’s ability to identify objects, people, or faces, so that the cameras do not trigger any detection alerts. By blocking the camera’s ability to detect what the pattern covers, the person becomes a needle in a haystack again — until someone knows where to look. 

“Privacy is a fundamental right,” Swearingen told TechCrunch in a call this week. He described his patterns as a way to allow people to “opt-out of being tracked.”

In its first public test Friday at the Def Con cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Swearingen successfully demonstrated the pattern printed on a vehicle, proving that these patterns can be effective at defeating surveillance detection in the real world.

Teaching a model how to paint

In a call from his home in Kansas City, where he co-founded cybersecurity meet-up SecKC, Swearingen told TechCrunch that as a cyber professional he is acutely aware of the privacy and security risks of surveillance.

He described how his town is swamped with surveillance cameras, sometimes located just a few feet from each other. He said that he and others never opted in to being watched, just like he never opted-in to having the government use his driver’s license for facial recognition.

Swearingen described himself as a middle-aged white guy who lives in the center of the United States, and acknowledged that as a result he has not faced hardship or discrimination for being who he is or what he looks like. Swearingen recounted how last year he wanted to attend a protest, but felt uncomfortable and concerned that the vast number of cameras could track people who were exercising their constitutional rights to free expression.

If he felt this way, undoubtedly others would as well, including those who wanted to exercise their rights but may not feel safe or comfortable doing so themselves. Swearingen got to work.

For as long as there have been cameras capable of detecting things, there have been efforts to counter the technology. Several art projects and clothing brands have introduced apparel that aims to help people defeat facial recognition. Some eyeglass makers are jumping on the trend, albeit not with much efficacy. 

Swearingen said his research builds on some of this earlier work, which showed that it was possible to block camera detections. 

He started out last year with a proof-of-concept test lab that began by incrementally defeating one open-source video camera detection algorithm after another. Over the course of the year, he refined the patterns by scaling up his tests with additional computer processing power. He thanked the wider community who showed up with hardware to help further the project along. 

His proof-of-concept evolved over time into a reinforcement learning model, essentially a self-contained system that could train itself on which patterns work and which do not against the specific camera algorithms he is testing. In simple terms, Swearingen told TechCrunch that he essentially taught his model “how to paint.”

Each time a pattern failed and an algorithm detected it, the model would try again, over and over, until it eventually defeated multiple algorithms at once.

His model soon began to find perfect recipes for patterns that were able to defeat all of the 11 open-source detection algorithms he tested, including the software that powers Flock license plate readers, Axon body-worn cameras, and cameras running Clearview AI.

Now the model creates new patterns every minute, each batch mathematically better than the last, he said.

On Friday at the Def Con cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Swearingen ran his first real-world test. With help from Donut Media, the test involved covering a 2009 Toyota Yaris with one of Swearingen’s newest patterns to see if the car would be invisible to detection by a Flock camera.

“We proved it was effective;” said Swearingen; though, the wheels were a challenge, he said. The video of the demo will be out in the next few weeks, said Donut Media.

With a public demo in Las Vegas now under his belt, the project is early proof that it is possible to avoid algorithmic detection in public spaces. The next step is getting the patterns into the hands of people who want them, he said.

The noRecognition project also has a crowdsourcing campaign to help fund the sale of early merchandise featuring the patterns, from T-shirts to hoodies, with the potential for pattern-printed skins for vehicles down the line. Swearingen said the aim is for the patterns to be high quality and resolution good enough to work from a distance, while also looking aesthetically fashionable.

He said he is keeping his strongest patterns off the internet to prevent the camera makers from defeating them, but that the work is not yet done. His models are continuing to grind out new patterns.

“Every failure improves my model, and so [the patterns] keep getting better and better,” he said.

The iPhone Fold’s two colorways may have been revealed, with the foldable smartphone potentially shipping in dark blue and silver colorways.

The iPhone Fold is expected to arrive this fall alongside the iPhone 18 Pro. However, while the general design and specifications have pretty much been settled on, rumors over the summer couldn’t decide what colors it will ship with.

If images shared by Sonny Dickson are accurate, it will ship in at least two fairly pedestrian colorways. That would be Silver and Dark Blue.

The post to X on August 8 shows a pair of third-party accessories for the inbound model. The covers for the camera bump are claimed to be color-matched to the iPhone Fold.

This does depend on the manufacturer of the camera bump protector to be correct with their information. It’s possible that the two images are correct, but they can always be an educated guess by the accessory producer.

Sonny Dickson is a fairly reliable leaker, which means we can consider the accessories as being genuinely produced by someone. Whether that manufacturer is right is another matter entirely.

This is not the only color-related post Dickson has made for the inbound iPhones. In May, he posted photos of dummy units of the iPhone 18, including options in Silver, Black, Light Blue, and Dark Cherry.

Speculative colors

Back in February, one rumor about the specifications of the iPhone Fold said that two colors were on the way. It was claimed that one color was white and the other was unknown, but that the camera plateau would be all-black either way.

The same month, another report insisted that one of the two colors would be a black or dark gray, while the other was white or light silver.

By June, it was alleged that Apple still hadn’t nailed down the colors for the model, and that a black option probably wasn’t on the way.

Based on the iPhone Fold being a premium model that Apple’s supply chain is only getting to grips with producing for the first time, the limited color choice seems very plausible. That said, it doesn’t stop Apple from introducing other colors down the road.

DStv, GOtv, and StarTimes are the three pay-TV providers worth your money in Nigeria today. DStv gives you the most channels and the best sports coverage, but it costs the most. GOtv and StarTimes cost less and still cover local shows, news, and some sports.

Below, we break down what each one actually offers, what it costs each month, and who should skip it. We also explain why one popular “cheap option” from a few years back is no longer something you should sign up for.

Quick Take: Our Top Picks

If you want the most channels and the best live sport, pick DStv. If you want solid entertainment on a tighter budget, GOtv is the better fit. If price is your main concern and you don’t mind fewer premium channels, StarTimes is the cheapest way in.

How We Compared These Providers

We looked at four things for each provider: the monthly cost of each package, the type of content on offer (sport, movies, kids’ shows, local channels), how widely available the service is across Nigeria, and how the provider has performed over time. We did not test signal quality ourselves, so any statement about reliability below is based on what the providers themselves publish or what is widely and consistently reported, not on our own measurements.

DStv Nigeria

DStv is the oldest and biggest pay-TV service in Africa. MultiChoice launched DStv in October 1995, and it was one of the first digital satellite TV services in the world outside the United States.

DStv costs more than the other two providers on this list. In return, you get more channels, more HD content, and the widest range of live sport, including many of the global cycling races covered in our roundup of the biggest bike racing events around the world.

Packages and Prices

These are the current DStv Nigeria package prices as published on DStv’s own site. Prices can change, so check that page again before you commit, especially since MultiChoice has raised prices most years in the past.

Best For

DStv suits you if you follow live sport closely, especially football and cycling, or if you want the widest choice of movie and general entertainment channels in one place. It also suits households that will share one subscription across several viewers with different tastes, since the top packages carry something for almost everyone.

Watch Out For

The upfront cost is the main problem. You pay for the decoder and dish first, then a monthly fee on top. If you only watch a handful of channels, you are paying for a lot you won’t use. Signal quality also depends heavily on how the dish was installed. A dish that isn’t aligned correctly, or one blocked by trees or nearby buildings, will drop signal during heavy rain even on the higher-tier packages. For a deeper side-by-side breakdown of every tier, see our detailed DStv vs GOtv package comparison.

GOtv Nigeria

GOtv comes from the same company as DStv, MultiChoice, but it’s built for a different budget. It uses a smaller antenna instead of a satellite dish, which makes it easier and cheaper to set up.

You still get sport, movies, and kids’ channels, just fewer of them than DStv’s top tiers. If a football match is on a channel your GOtv package includes, you’ll get the same coverage as any other viewer watching through a properly set up decoder.

Packages and Prices

These figures come from a current GOtv Nigeria pricing guide and match what other trackers report for the same tiers. GOtv’s packages are cumulative, so a higher tier always includes everything in the tiers below it. That’s useful to know before you compare it to DStv, where the packages don’t always work the same way.

Best For

GOtv suits first-time pay-TV buyers, students, and anyone who wants local shows, some sport, and a handful of movie channels without a big setup cost. It’s also a sensible pick for a second TV in the house, since the antenna and decoder cost far less than a second DStv dish.

Watch Out For

GOtv’s lower tiers leave out most premium sport and many international channels. If live football is the main reason you’re buying pay-TV, check the exact channel list for the tier you’re considering before you pay, not after. The antenna also needs a clear line of sight, so tall buildings or trees nearby can weaken your signal the same way they would for a satellite dish.

StarTimes

StarTimes is a Chinese company, and Nigeria is its biggest market. It’s the cheapest of the three main providers and the one most likely to fit a tight monthly budget.

StarTimes offers two different ways to receive its signal, and this matters more than most buyers realize. One is DTT, short for Digital Terrestrial Television, which uses a small antenna like GOtv’s. The other is DTH, short for Direct-to-Home, which uses a satellite dish like DStv’s. The channel lineup and prices differ slightly between the two.

Packages and Prices

These are the current StarTimes Nigeria packages and prices for both transmission types. Before you buy a decoder, ask the dealer whether it’s a DTT or DTH unit, since the two aren’t interchangeable and you can’t switch packages across them without buying new hardware.

Best For

StarTimes suits budget-conscious households who mainly want local news, Nollywood content, and some international channels, and who don’t need the deepest sports lineup. It’s also a reasonable option in areas where DStv or GOtv installation and repair support is harder to find.

Watch Out For

StarTimes carries fewer premium international channels than DStv, and its sports coverage is thinner than either DStv or GOtv’s higher tiers. Some users also report that customer support response times are slower outside major cities, though we couldn’t verify this consistently enough to state it as a general rule, so treat it as something to ask about locally before you buy. If cost is genuinely your top priority, it’s worth reading how much to budget for a subscription over a full year, not just the first month, in our guide to budgeting for a pay-TV subscription.

What Happened to Smaller Providers Like MyTV

You may still see MyTV Africa mentioned as a cheap pay-TV option in older articles. It isn’t one anymore. MyTV stopped broadcasting in September 2021 and its remaining subscribers were moved over to a different provider, TStv. If you buy a MyTV decoder today, it will not work.

TStv itself is worth a note of caution, not a recommendation. In 2023, TStv went off air for more than a month with no clear explanation to subscribers, and it has a history of going quiet after launches before relaunching later. That doesn’t mean it’s unusable today, but it means you should ask around locally about current service quality before paying for a full year upfront, rather than assuming a smaller provider will be as stable as the three main ones above.

The pattern is worth remembering: Nigeria’s pay-TV market has room for maybe three or four providers with enough scale to maintain satellites, decoders, and support networks reliably. Smaller entrants have struggled to keep that up. If you’re choosing between a well-known name and a cheaper newcomer, the newcomer’s lower price often reflects that risk.

How to Choose the Right Pay-TV Provider for You

Start with what you actually watch. If live football, international sport, or a wide range of movie channels matters most, DStv’s mid-to-top tiers are the only ones that reliably deliver all of that in one package. If you mainly watch local shows, news, and some entertainment, GOtv or StarTimes will cover it for much less.

Next, think about your budget honestly, not just for the first month, but for a full year. A ₦4,400 monthly DStv package still adds up to over ₦50,000 a year, on top of the decoder and dish. Compare that to a full year of a mid-tier GOtv or StarTimes package before you decide.

Finally, ask about local support. Talk to a neighbor or a dealer near you about which provider has the most reliable local installers and fastest repair turnaround in your specific area. Signal quality and support speed vary by location more than the marketing materials suggest, so this local check matters more than most buyers expect. If cable and satellite options don’t fit your situation at all, it’s also worth comparing them against internet-based streaming alternatives available in Nigeria, which need reliable data instead of a dish or antenna.

Key Takeaways

DStv offers the most channels and the strongest live sport coverage, but it costs the most, both upfront and monthly. GOtv gives you a solid middle ground: lower setup cost, decent entertainment, and packages that scale with your budget. StarTimes is the cheapest entry point, but you need to pick the right transmission type, DTT or DTH, before you buy hardware. MyTV Africa no longer operates, so ignore any guide that still recommends it, and treat smaller newcomers like TStv with some caution until you’ve confirmed local service quality.

FAQ

Let’s cut to the chase: Starting today, you can take an additional $100 off of our current $300 discount for your founder, investor, or attendee TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, which is a nice bonus on top of our current discounted pricing. 

This flash sale will run only until tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. This discount will mark your last chance at a bonus deal before our next pricing tier kicks in on August 21. 

Register with this link to lock in your extra $100 off.

If you need to learn more before locking in your plans, Disrupt takes over Moscone West from October 13–15, bringing more than 10,000 founders, VCs, tech industry innovators, and builders for three days built around one thing: creating momentum for future success. 

This isn’t a passive conference you simply watch — it’s a curated itinerary of speakers, workshops, network opportunities and post-event excitement for those actively building, investing, and looking for what’s next. 

The Disrupt Stage: The conversations everyone will be talking about 

The Disrupt Stage is our flagship programming, and we just revealed the initial lineup. We’ll dig into the biggest shifts in tech right now, whether it’s a post-smartphone future with Amazon’s SVP of Devices and Services Panos Panay; the real implications of a world in which everyone can develop their own software, with Replit founder and CEO Amjad Masad; and much, much more. 

But that’s just one stage. Disrupt 2026 also features the: 

AI Stage, covering the security gaps and business model shifts AI is forcing on every SaaS company.

New Smart Money Stage, tackling stablecoins, instant payments, and AI’s role in financial trust. 

New Smart Systems Stage, with a perspective on fusion breakthroughs and grid strain powering AI’s next decade. 

Builders Stage, the long-standing favorite stage where founders and investors get tactical about raising, hiring, and scaling. 

Beyond the stages 

Most Disrupt passes also unlock Startup Battlefield, where 200 startups will compete live for the Battlefield Cup. You’ll also get access to networking opportunities driven by your needs as a founder, investor, or learner, plus our Expo Hall, where hundreds of startups showcase their work. 

This flash sale ends Friday 

After 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday, August 7, this extra $100 savings goes away. Regular discounted pricing ends on August 21. If Disrupt is on your radar for this year, this is the best deal you’ll get between now and the event. 

Save an extra $100 before Friday.

We’ll see you October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco!