Every major tech conference has themes. Most are vague enough to mean everything and nothing at the same time. SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 is doing something different — four tightly defined technology domains, each backed by live demonstrations, dedicated exhibit floors, and sessions featuring the people actually building and funding these technologies globally.

TechCrunch is partnering with SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 as an official media partner, and our Startup Battlefield team will be on the ground selecting one standout semifinalist from the SusHi Tech Challenge to advance to the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200 — one of the most prestigious launchpads in tech. Here’s what’s on the floor.

AI — beyond the hype, into the infrastructure

Sessions featuring Howard Wright (Nvidia), Rob Chu (AWS), and Eric Benhamou (Benhamou Global Ventures) cut through the noise to examine where AI is genuinely deployed at scale and where the real risks lie. On the floor, AI-themed university startups pitch alongside global players, and the AI Film Festival Japan, a partner event at Tokyo Innovation Base in Yurakucho, explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping culture in real time.

Robotics — physical AI has arrived

The robots at SusHi Tech aren’t behind glass — they’re on the floor and interactive. Onstage, Nissan, Isuzu, and Applied Intuition’s Qasar Younis examine how software-defined vehicles are reshaping transportation. Physical AI isn’t a future trend. It’s in Tokyo on April 27.

Resilience — the cities that survive what’s coming

Eva Chen (Trend Micro) and NEC’s Noboru Nakatani tackle cyber defense, while top climate tech VCs from Breakthrough Energy and Cleantech Group examine where global investment is flowing. A VR disaster simulator and site-visit tours of Tokyo’s underground flood-control infrastructure make the stakes viscerally real.

Entertainment — Japan’s cultural engine meets AI

Sessions with the CEOs of Production I.G, MAPPA, and CoMix Wave Films tackle what it takes for Tokyo to become the Hollywood of animation. On the floor, startups are using AI to translate manga globally, generate music from text prompts, and bring Japanese IP to life as anime — delivered worldwide.

Can’t make it to Tokyo? You can still be there

Missing SusHi Tech Tokyo doesn’t have to mean missing out. Remote participants get more than a livestream — on-site staff will walk the floor on your behalf, carrying a device that displays your face so you can interact with attendees and exhibitors in real time, face-to-face. It’s the closest thing to actually being there.

Note: Please note that some sessions may not be available for viewing.

Apply for remote participation with on-site staff support here.

Can’t swing that either? Ticket holders can stream sessions online and tap into the programming from wherever they are. Browse the full session list here.

In conjunction with the startup event, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government also hosts a meeting of leaders from 55 cities across five continents. They will discuss the theme of “A New Urban Future Built on Climate and Disaster Resilience.” The city leaders’ summit is part of G-NETS (Global City Network for Sustainability), organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government since 2022 as a multicity forum to discuss how to solve common challenges with a focus now on resilience to urban climate disasters and the well-being of citizens. The summit can be observed by general audiences on YouTube in real time and after the event.  

G-NETS official website

G-NETS YouTube Channel 

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 runs April 27–29 at Tokyo Big Sight. Business days are April 27–28; public day (free admission) is April 29. Register here.

My original Switch should feel retired by now. It has the thick bezels, the aging screen, the tired battery life, and the unmistakable aura of a gadget that has survived too many backpacks. Next to Switch 2 and the current wave of handheld PCs, Nintendo’s first hybrid console looks hopelessly outgunned.

And yet, I keep picking it up.

My standards are not heroic here. I want to wake it and start playing before the part of my brain that checks battery percentages gets involved. I use the old console in 2026 because it’s almost annoyingly direct.

That shouldn’t feel radical. Somehow, it does.

Simple is still a feature

Low bar, sure. Portable gaming has done impressive work finding ways to trip over it. The Switch 2 is the obvious upgrade, and Nintendo’s newer system has the stronger hardware argument. It costs $449.99, though, which isn’t exactly an impulse upgrade when my old Switch already has the games I bought for it.

The PC-based rivals make a fair case, especially machines like the Steam Deck OLED and ROG Ally X. They’re faster, sharper, and much better at making my old Switch look like a lunchbox with buttons. On paper, they win easily.

In my hands, the math gets less tidy.

More power means more chores

Expanded access also means more ways to manage the act of playing. A handheld PC can be brilliant, but it can also bring Windows, launchers, battery estimates, storage juggling, graphics presets, update prompts, and the quiet suspicion that I should spend 20 minutes tuning a game before enjoying it.

That’s great for people who like having control. Sometimes, I do too. I’m not pretending my Switch can stare down an ROG Ally X and win a spec fight without embarrassing itself in public.

But that’s also the point. My Switch doesn’t invite me to optimize anything. It just sits there, slightly dusty, waiting to be useful. And that’s coming from someone who absolutely loves tinkering with settings.

Good enough is underrated

The real trick is that Nintendo’s first Switch has become useful in a boring, durable way. It’s familiar. It’s portable enough. It has years of games behind it, from Nintendo’s first-party staples to indies that still make sense on a small screen. Its best feature in 2026 isn’t the Tegra chip, obviously. It’s the fact that I already know what happens when I undock it.

Nintendo is still feeding that library in odd little ways. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen came to Switch in February as standalone releases, dragging two Game Boy Advance games from 2004 into the same eShop as the company’s newest hardware. That’s very Nintendo, for better and worse. It also helps explain why my old Switch refuses to feel fully finished.

I don’t miss 2017. I miss a gadget that already knows its job. My games are there. My saves are there. So is the same little click when I slide the Joy-Cons into place.

The original Switch isn’t winning 2026 by being the best handheld. It’s winning by being the least needy one in the room.

Handheld consoles are great for gaming on the go, but who wants to hold onto things all the time? Would it not be easier to strap the game to your wrist? Well, not in its current form factor, but [LeggoMyFroggo], aka [
Chris Hackmann] has you covered, because he turned the Gameboy Color into a (relatively smart) watch.

Why “relatively” smart? Well, we say that because he’s using the original Game Boy Color CPU, a Sharp SOC based on the Z80 that is far less powerful than modern smartwatch platforms. That SOC is helped out by an RP2040 that translates the chip’s parallel RGB output into something a modern watch-sized display can comprehend via its PIOs. [Chris] refers to it as a “poor man’s FPGA” which isn’t a bad way of thinking about it in this context. Yes, he could have just stuck an emulator on that chip, but what’s the fun in that?

The controls are squeezed into the sides of the watch — the four face buttons on one side, and a tiny D-pad on the other — but that’s easy enough because this thing is 15 mm thick. Since [LeggoMyFroggo] is a purist, he insists on loading the games via cartridge, which does not help thin it out. Game Boy carts are not not watch-friendly, so the cartridges are custom PCBs that plug into an M.2 slot, but with the original (or at least compatible) ROM.

If it wasn’t for the cartridge slot, maybe a battery would have fit. But it doesn’t, which leads to our favorite part of the hack: the battery is in the watch strap. This is both kind of crazy, but also brilliant. The band is cast in silicone, so he’s able to embed a flexi-PCB inside. As for the watch body, that’s CNC’d out of 6061 aluminum before being anodized to a very Nintendo-esque purple.

[Chris] evidently has a soft spot for the Game Boy Color — we featured his FrogBoy re-imagining of the handheld a few years back. The project is just up on YouTube as of this writing, but the watch will join the FrogBoy on [Chris]’s GitHub so we can all get in on the fun once he’s finished the documentation.

Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. If you’re looking for something new to play this weekend, we’ve got a bunch of options for you. We’ve also got some interesting upcoming games to tell you about as well.

In a press release announcing that Playdate Season 3 is coming later this year, Panic included a line that I’ve been thinking about a lot this week. “Panic is currently relieved and happy that people can make amazing games for Playdate with just 16 megabytes of RAM,” it said, a nod toward the ongoing RAM crisis.

The Playdate doesn’t exactly have a lot of technical oomph, and I’m frequently delighted by what developers are able to do within its limitations. Restrictions foster creativity — many folks had to get pretty inventive on Twitter back when they only had 140 characters to play with. Here, Panic offered a welcome reminder that you don’t necessarily need an ultra-powerful rig or console to have access to more great games than you’ll ever actually be able to play.

For instance, my favorite game of the year so far, Titanium Court, works on Macs that are capable of running macOS 11 (the 2020 version of the operating system) or later. On PC, you’ll need a graphics card that’s compatible with OpenGL or DirectX 9, the latter of which was released in 2002. For what it’s worth, the game would also fit on a CD-ROM.

There are tons of other great indie games new and old that’ll run just fine on lower-powered machines. Bear that in mind the next time a current-gen console or other gaming system gets a price increase because of the RAM shortage. The DLSS 5 debacle aside, you probably don’t need a 50-series NVIDIA GPU either. Maybe just pick up a Playdate instead.

New releases

While many of the weapons, characters and enemies are the same, Vampire Crawlers is a fresh spin on Vampire Survivors. It’s a turn-based roguelite deckbuilder. Instead of automatically firing whatever weapons you have at nearby enemies, you’ll play cards to conquer the mob that you face in each fight. You can still modify and evolve your weapons and abilities.

Each card has a casting cost, so you’ll need to consider which ones to play in a given moment and the order in which you do so. As such, it’s a slower-paced, more strategic take on the original game, albeit with a similar level of visual chaos should you put together a particularly powerful build.

I’ve played a ton of Vampire Survivors and the Vampire Crawlers demo lured me in too. Its approach to turn-based battles is working for me. I’ve only played a little of the full game so far, but there’s every chance I could lose days of my life to it.

Vampire Crawlers — from Survivors creator Poncle and co-developer Nosebleed Interactive — is available now on Steam (for PC and Mac), Xbox for PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch for $10. It’s included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Fable creator Peter Molyneux and his studio 22cans are back with another god game. In Masters of Albion, you can construct and modify settlements as a literal hand of god. You’ll design buildings (which are immediately constructed and usable) and manage workers. You can also assume control of a human or animal in the world to take on quests and hunt for treasure.

There’s a tower defense element to this as well. You’ll need to prepare your towns from nighttime attacks from various creatures. You can fend off these foes as the god or battle them on the ground as a hero. There’s a lot going on here, but perhaps my favorite part is this apparent warning in the mature content description section of the Steam page: “Players are also able to use crude, adult hand gestures at will in the game.” Yes, that means you can flip the bird while playing as the god hand. Yes, I am very mature.

Masters of Albion is now available in early access on Steam. It typically costs $25, but there’s a 10 percent discount until April 29.

Snap & Grab caught our attention at last summer’s edition of the Day of the Devs showcase. This is a cartoonish heist game in which you’ll carry out your robberies in two parts. You play as Nifty, a famous fashion photographer. In the setup phase, you’ll take advantage of your position to take snaps of loot, threats and opportunities and then use those to construct a plan. With the help of some henchman, you’ll then try to execute the heist.

The game’s developer No Goblin is taking an episodic approach to Snap & Grab as it’s releasing the game in five parts over the course of this year. The first episode is available now on Steam (usually $8, though there’s a 10 percent discount until May 1).

Snow Day Software’s follow-up to Indoor Kickball is Indoor Baseball. It’s an arcade game in which you play baseball inside buildings, funnily enough. You’ll play 1v1 matches against the CPU or a friend in local multiplayer. You can also dive into a 14-game season or check out the story mode, in which you’ll try to play your way back onto your school’s baseball team (and maybe do some chores to make up for smashing too many things at home).

There are several different levels, each of which has a variety of ways for you to make a home run, from smashing a window to landing the ball in a toilet. It seems light and fun and as a burgeoning baseball guy, I dig the idea of this one.

Indoor Baseball is available now on Steam, Xbox for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. It costs $15.

Upcoming

I love Another Crab’s Treasure very much and so I’ll always be interested in whatever Aggro Crab is up to. Given that the studio also co-developed the smash hit Peak (alongside Landfall), I imagine many other folks feel the same way.

Crashout Crew is another multiplayer game from Aggro Crab. This one adopts the chaotic co-op formula of games like Overcooked. As a team of forklift drivers, you and your buds will work together to fill orders in warehouses while dealing with obstacles like blackouts, cacti, fire and bees.

It’s coming to Steam, Xbox on PC and Xbox Series X/S on May 28. It’ll be available on Game Pass on day one.

I’m very much here for slice-of-life games based around soccer (I still need to play Despelote!). Kick is another such title. This is a side-scrolling, anime-inspired game from solo developer nospacelost and publisher Shoreline Games, in which you dribble a ball as you make your way to school.

There are 23 levels with people to dodge and obstacles to overcome. You’ll need to avoid damaging anything as you try to pull off tricks by kicking the ball at the correct angle, all while making sure you get to class on time (you can switch off the timer for a more relaxed experience). It looks pretty, and it never hurts a game’s prospects to have a pup accompanying the main character.

No release date for Kick has been announced. It’s coming to Steam at some point.

Elfie: A Sand Plan is a cozy sandcastle building game from Pressed Elephant and Sol’s Atelier. There are more than 180 levels in which you’ll build sand sculptures to match what Elfie, a small elephant, has in mind. There are three difficulty levels too.

It looks cute and I adore elephants (oops, I just started fostering another one), so I’m interested in checking it out. Elfie: A Sand Plan is coming to Steam for PC and Mac on May 12. It’ll cost $7, and there’ll be a 10 percent launch discount.

It took the team at Realmsoft 14 years to bring Clockwork Ambrosia to fruition and if this latest trailer is any indication, that long development cycle could have well been worthwhile. This is a side-scrolling action platformer in which you can customize half a dozen weapons using more than 150 modifiers.

You play as an airship engineer who tries to survive on a steampunk island full of aggressive robots and creatures following a crash. I really dig the art direction here, which features lush hand-drawn pixel art and lovely animations. Realmsoft made the game using a custom engine the team built from scratch.

I’m looking forward to checking out Clockwork Ambrosia. It’s coming to Steam on May 12.

The company raised $23m last year to expand its workforce.

Belfast software company Cloudsmith has raised $72m in Series C funding led by the investment firm TCV.

The raise, Cloudsmith said, would position the company for “massive growth” as it eyes the AI-generated software market. The funds will help accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market capabilities. Insight Partners and other existing investors also supported the round.

The latest funding comes just a year after the company raised $23m in a Series B to expand its workforce across departments and invest in AI R&D. TVC also led this round.

Founded in 2016 by Lee Skillen and Alan Carson, Cloudsmith helps businesses manage software on the cloud, and is used by companies that need control, security and scalability in their software supply chain. The company made two Series A raises – $15m in 2021 and $11m in 2023.

The new investment follows a period of strong year-over-year growth, Cloudsmith said, as companies seek modern infrastructure to keep pace with the speed and scale of AI-generated software.

Businesses also rely on software companies such as Cloudsmith to provide guardrails and governance when adopting AI-coding agents.

The investment comes at a time when AI coding is seeing unprecedented uptake by enterprises, which brings with it an ever-expanding threat surface.

Enterprises need to manage an growing software supply chain, while facing regulatory pressures and their own security requirements to ensure their AI-generated software is secure by design.

“AI agents generate so much software, so fast, it’s nearly impossible for humans to carefully review it all,” said Glenn Weinstein, the CEO of Cloudsmith.

Weinstein said Cloudsmith has the capacity to protect enterprises against the new kinds of threats that AI-driven development introduces.

“TCV and Insight Partners both recognise this profound shift, and their backing is helping Cloudsmith scale up for the massive wave of adoption of AI agents across enterprise software teams.”

Thomas Krane, the managing director at Insight Partners added: “In an era increasingly defined by AI-driven development, securing the software supply chain is critical.

“As a cloud-native offering, Cloudsmith is well positioned to do this – providing the scale and reliability needed to help power enterprise and AI-driven builds and mitigate emerging risks.”

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Cohere, the Canada-based enterprise AI unicorn, announced Friday that it would merge with the Germany-based enterprise AI company Aleph Alpha.

The deal, which has yet to close, will value the newly formed company at $20 billion, the FT reported. Schwarz Group, one of Aleph Alpha’s top backers, will also invest $600 million in Cohere’s Series E round, which is expected to close later this year, CNBC reported.

A handful of Silicon Valley players continue to dominate the AI commercial landscape, which is busy with consolidation activity.

A press release announcing the Cohere-Aleph Alpha union said one goal of the merger was to give businesses and governments an alternative to these dominant tech players, one that offers greater independence and control over their data. It also hopes to combine the talent pool across Canada and Germany to create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse.”