SusHi Tech Tokyo is not a convention — it is a deal room with 60,000 individuals

There’s a model of a tech convention the place you fly someplace costly, sit by panels, accumulate enterprise playing cards you’ll by no means observe up on, and fly house. SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 was intentionally designed to be the alternative of that.

When 60,000 attendees descend on Tokyo Massive Sight April 27–29, the headline numbers are laborious to disregard: 750 startup exhibitors, 151 periods, metropolis leaders from 49 international locations. However the stat that tells you what sort of occasion this truly is? It’s 10,000 facilitated enterprise conferences — brokered, booked, and tracked earlier than most attendees even land.

The infrastructure of deal-making

SusHi Tech’s official app is much less occasion information and extra matchmaking engine. Earlier than the convention opens, attendees register their profile and describe what they’re on the lookout for. The app’s AI surfaces suggestions, opens a direct message channel, and allows you to pre-book one of many venue’s expanded assembly areas. On the ground, QR code enterprise card trade replaces the fumbling-for-a-card second. It’s a small factor that indicators a bigger philosophy: Take away the friction between the individuals who must be speaking.

That deal-making ethos extends to the startup pitch competitors. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield program supervisor, Isabelle Johannessen, will choose one standout startup well-suited to the North American market from the semifinalists to advance to the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200, a launchpad to one of many business’s most prestigious phases. 

Corporates are pitching to startups — not the opposite means round

One in all SusHi Tech’s extra attention-grabbing structural selections is the reverse pitch format. Quite than startups lining as much as impress large corporations, corporates and metropolis governments take the stage to current their unsolved challenges and invite startups to suggest options.

This 12 months, Moreton Bay and Rome are each working reverse pitch periods — basically issuing public RFPs to a worldwide startup viewers. On the company aspect, 62 accomplice corporations — together with Sony, Google, Microsoft, and Mizuho — are internet hosting devoted Open Innovation displays and periods, actively trying to find collaborators. Twelve domain-specific clusters spanning logistics, life sciences, railways, and local weather tech are additionally exhibiting for the primary time, every trying to co-create with startups slightly than merely observe them.

750 startups, 400 of them worldwide

Of the 750 exhibitors, 400 come from outdoors Japan — a real cross-section of the worldwide startup ecosystem. Metropolis companions from 25 international locations and areas convey their very own cohorts with an specific mandate to attach startups to Japanese companions and capital. A brand new group of 45 “SusHi Tech World Startups” — growth-stage Japanese corporations backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities — are making their world debut in a devoted pavilion.

For worldwide founders and buyers who’ve been watching Japan from the skin, SusHi Tech is probably the most environment friendly entry level the market has ever supplied. The enterprise card you trade on April 27 doesn’t have to finish up in a drawer.

Can’t make it to Tokyo? You may nonetheless be there

Lacking SusHi Tech Tokyo doesn’t need to imply lacking out. Distant members get greater than a livestream — on-site workers will stroll the ground in your behalf, carrying a tool that shows your face so you possibly can work together with attendees and exhibitors in actual time, face-to-face. It’s the closest factor to really being there.

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

Can’t swing that both? Ticket holders can stream periods on-line and faucet into the programming from wherever they’re. Browse the full session list here.

Notice: Some periods will not be out there for on-line streaming.

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 runs April 27–29 at Tokyo Massive Sight. Enterprise days are April 27–28; Public Day (free admission) is April 29. Register here.