Five More VCs Join Panel to Judge Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2026

TechCrunch has announced five additional venture partners who will join the judging lineup for Startup Battlefield 200, the annual pitch competition taking place at Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco this October. The judges bring deep expertise across AI, enterprise software, biotech, and emerging consumer trends.

The Judges#

The newly revealed panelists are:

• Caleb Appleton (Bison Ventures) — Focuses on physical AI, robotics, and biotech startups. A biomedical engineer whose portfolio spans companies like Cobot and Grid Aero.
• Sara Deshpande (Maven Ventures) — Invests in seed-stage consumer applications, particularly digital health and consumer AI, and teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford.
• Aatish Nayak (Kleiner Perkins) — Recently joined as partner, concentrating on AI-native founders with vertical domain expertise; previously held product leadership roles at Harvey and Scale AI.
• Jason Risch (Greylock) — Backs enterprise security, AI infrastructure, and data platforms; his investments include Onehouse and Baseten.
• Mark Xu (Index Ventures) — Invests across cybersecurity, infrastructure, and frontier AI; has backed companies including Fireworks and Parallel.

What's Ahead#

The event runs October 13–15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Two hundred carefully screened startups will compete; only a select few will advance to live pitches before thousands of founders, investors, and media, with the winner claiming a $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup.

These five judges join 15 others already announced. A final group will be unveiled later to evaluate the competition's finalists.