On Wednesday night at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things we don't yet understand will explain what's coming. This is the last StrictlyVC event of 2025 and the line-up is truly ridiculous.
The series was sponsored by TechCrunch and broadcast around the world. Steve Case rented a theater in Washington, DC. We spoke with the Greek Prime Minister in Athens. Kirsten Greene hosted us at the Presidio in San Francisco. However, the concept is always the same. Get people working on really important developments in a room before anyone else understands their importance.
Our favorite moment? In 2019, Sam Altman told the StrictlyVC audience that OpenAI's monetization strategy is essentially “build AGI and then ask how do you monetize it?” Everyone laughed. He wasn't kidding.
This time, we're introduced to Nicholas Keres, a particle accelerator physicist who spent 20 years at the Department of Energy building things that should be impossible. He is currently tackling semiconductor manufacturing's biggest problems. That means every advanced chip relies on a $400 million machine that uses a laser and only one company in the Netherlands knows how to make it. (Some people are even more annoyed: Americans invented the technology and then sold it to Europe.) Keres is building the next generation in America using particle accelerator technology. It may sound nerdy, but it's more important than you might think.
And Mina Fahmi has created a ring that captures your whispered thoughts and turns them into text. Before you roll your eyes, know that he and co-founder Kirak Hong had been working on this at Meta for years after the company was acquired. By the way, Stream Ring isn't trying to be your friend, it's trying to extend your brain. Backed by Toni Schneider, the operator who grew WordPress to 1 billion visitors, Sandbar has just emerged from stealth and may be on to something. (Schneider is a partner at True Ventures, whose other hardware investments include Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit. He also plans to be in Palo Alto next week.)
Max Hodak, the founder of Science Corporation, the cover of Time magazine, and the former co-founder of Neuralink, has already restored the sight of dozens of blind people with retinal implants. He is currently working on a “biohybrid” brain-computer interface in which a chip seeded with stem cells grows into brain tissue, allowing paralyzed people to control devices with their thoughts. In Hodak's view, that's just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, he thinks 2035 will look very different from today, and he's happy to share what it looks like.
Finally, we're pleased to welcome Chi-Hua Chien and Elizabeth Weil, two VCs who have backed Twitter, Spotify, TikTok, Slack, SpaceX, Figma, and Coinbase since before they were famous. Chien, who runs Goodwater Capital, believes Silicon Valley has completely misread the AI era as everyone jumps into enterprise AI. After stints at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter, Mr. Weil founded Scribble Ventures, where he made more than 100 angel investments and delivered a 4x return on his first fund. Her network is annoyingly good. Both believe the best opportunities in consumer technology are the ones that everyone is ignoring, and we'll explain why.
tech crunch event
San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026
PlayGround Global is co-hosted by General Partner Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel. There will be drinks, delicious food, and a good time. Seating is limited, so if you want to go, act early.
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