The newly announced judges are Caleb Appleton (Partner at Bison Ventures), Sara Deshpande (General Partner at Maven Ventures), Aatish Nayak (Partner at Kleiner Perkins), Jason Risch (Partner at Greylock), and Mark Xu (Partner at Index Ventures). These venture capitalists will evaluate 200 selected startups competing for a coveted opportunity in the startup world. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is scheduled for October 13-15 in San Francisco.