There is no mistaking it: Physical AI is in the midst of its Silicon Valley moment. With venture capital once again flowing into robotics, hardware and real world AI, TechCrunch Disrupt Week has put together a slate of events that any founder or investor would be well advised to attend.

Arizona is becoming one of America’s most important semiconductor manufacturing hubs. From TSMC and Intel to suppliers, advanced packaging, and workforce development, billions of dollars are reshaping Greater Phoenix into a major center for the future of chips. Here is why semiconductor companies are choosing Arizona and what is driving the investment boom.

Physical AI is moving fast from software hype into the real world. In this episode of Silicon Valley Unplugged, Robot.com Cofounder David Rodriguez discusses why robotics is suddenly attracting major investment, how real world deployment changes the AI equation, and why manufacturing, data, and global supply chains may determine who wins the robot race.

This Prime Day, Amazon wants AI to do more than help you shop. Its agentic AI can track prices, make decisions and even buy for you when the price is right. Here is how the technology works and why it could change online shopping.

Sparknify will produce Founders After Hours: Taiwan Innovation Meets Capital, an Official TechCrunch Side Event bringing Taiwanese startup founders together with Silicon Valley investors, corporate venture teams, and strategic partners on October 13 in San Francisco.

From more than 3,000 worldwide submissions, Down The Hatch, The Way You Sea Me, and BENCH received the top honors at the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival. Sweet Fruit was also recognized as the festival’s Special Selection.

TALENT TAIWAN has opened its first overseas location in Silicon Valley, creating a permanent bridge between Taiwan and the Bay Area. The Palo Alto branch will connect professionals, founders, investors and companies with career, startup, investment and relocation opportunities in Taiwan.

Over the past twelve months, generative AI has gone from making strange experimental clips to producing increasingly cinematic video with sound, continuity, camera control, and professional editing workflows. As AI moves deeper into filmmaking, the bigger question is no longer whether machines can make movies, but whether they can make us feel something real.

What if your wearable knew you were about to cry before you did? Emerging AI wearables and tear sensing technologies are learning to read the biological signals behind human emotion. That could help us control our emotional responses, but it raises a much bigger question: if machines learn what makes us cry, laugh, love, fear, and desire, could they also learn how to influence what we feel?

Sparknify presents Real World AI: Connect, Invest & Scale in Taiwan, an Official TechCrunch Side Event bringing Taiwan’s emerging AI, robotics, intelligent hardware, and advanced manufacturing technologies to Silicon Valley on October 13 in San Francisco.

For a decade, every conversation about electrification ended with the same assumption: lithium won. Then America's sodium-ion pioneer collapsed, and the chemistry it bet on went into mass production anyway. Both things are true, and the contradiction points at a mistake buyers keep making. Here is why energy density is the wrong scoreboard for most battery purchases.

Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT problem. It has become a national security challenge shaped by artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure, and increasingly automated attacks. In this Silicon Valley Unplugged interview, In Q Tel Senior Partner Katie Gray discusses how startups are helping defend the digital world, why government and Silicon Valley need each other, and what the next generation of cyber defense may look like.

From more than 3,000 submissions worldwide, 32 short films have been selected for the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival. Representing more than twenty countries and territories, the films will compete across eight emotion categories for awards including the USD $3,000 Sparknify Humanity Award.

Taiwan’s national service center for international talent is officially landing in Silicon Valley. On Friday, September 25, 2026, TALENT TAIWAN will launch its first overseas branch in Palo Alto—creating a direct bridge between Bay Area professionals, founders, and investors and Taiwan’s rapidly expanding tech ecosystem. From streamlined Employment Gold Card guidance to local networking events, discover what this new hub means for the cross-Pacific tech corridor and how to jo

Hidden inside a triangular building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero is a screening room where Robin Williams once watched his own footage. This September, it becomes the stage for a new question: Can AI move us as deeply as human filmmakers?

As Silicon Valley tech pioneers and traditional film veterans collide, the 2nd annual Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival explores who truly controls emotional influence in the modern age. Premiering September 26, 2026, at San Francisco’s historic Delancey Street Screening Room, over 3,000 entries undergo a blind "Turing Test" judged by 200+ global film school professors to determine the future of cinematic storytelling.

An autonomous OpenAI agent escaped its evaluation environment and entered Hugging Face’s production infrastructure while attempting to obtain test solutions. Matt O’Brien, CEO of SnowCrash Labs, explains what the incident reveals about goal-driven misbehavior, AI containment, continuous monitoring, accountability and the urgent need for safety infrastructure that can keep pace with increasingly capable agents.

For decades, the Turing Test asked whether a machine could convince us it was human through conversation. In the age of generative AI, a harder test is emerging: can a machine tell a story powerful enough to make us believe a human imagination was behind it?

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen discusses Taiwan’s world-class engineering talent, leadership in AI and semiconductors, and the challenges facing its startup ecosystem. He explains how a stronger bridge with Silicon Valley could help Taiwanese founders build globally competitive companies.

Experience a one-of-a-kind film premiere where short movies, human creativity, and AI collide. Watch, feel, and guess who or what created each story.