For Sponsors

Put your brand in
the builder room.

AI Startup Rodeo is a one-day builder event in downtown Austin. Talks and live demos on AI agents, developer tools, security, open-source infrastructure and startups. Edition 02 focuses on machine-to-machine payments: how software pays and gets paid. One room, one stage, breakfast and lunch included.

One room, all day, no parallel sessions — a sponsor session runs in front of the entire audience. The first Rodeo worked, so it returns on October 30, as part of Austin Tech Week.

Oct 30, 2026Friday · 8 AM – 5 PM

Q Branch200 E 6th St · Austin, TX

Single trackOne room, one stage

Edition 02Machine-to-machine payments

Become a sponsor Press kit & assets

Who’s in the room

The audience mirrors the stage.

Edition 1 put 18 speakers on stage — almost all working engineers and technical founders, including speakers from Chaincode Labs and contributors to Bitcoin Core. The room draws the same three groups — the mix the room is built for:

~60%Full-stack AI buildersEngineers and technical founders shipping agents, tooling, and AI-accelerated products. They come for demos and working code.
~25%Founders & startup teamsStartup founders and their teams — including the teams building payments between machines.
~15%Investors & sponsorsThe people who fund, hire, and buy from the builders — in the room to find what ships next.

Edition 02 targets.

The format

No breakout rooms.
No competing sessions.

Full roomEvery talk, demo, and sponsor session runs in front of the whole audience — not a fraction of it.

Demos, not slide decksThe day is builder demos and technical talks. Your presence sits next to working code, not booth noise.

A full day togetherChef-catered breakfast and lunch are part of the ticket, so the room stays in the room — conversations included.

Builder communities

Who’s already in.

Edition 2 — builder communities

Q Branch · Synapto · PlebLab · React ATX · Bitcoin Builders Club · Zaprite

Edition 1 partners

Alby · Chaincode Labs · Unchained · OpenAgents · TabConf · The Bitcoin District · Fewsats

The lineup

Who’s on stage.

Announced as they lock in. Edition 1 ran 18 speakers, almost all working engineers and technical founders.

Austen Allred

Founder · Gauntlet AI

Robert Willis

Hacker and writer · Sakura Samurai
Photo: JohnBarringer1988, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ben Carman

Developer · Spiral

Benjamin Morrow

Builder · Brainstorm.world

Christopher Scott

Bitcoin developer

Roberto Fuentes

Founder · Synapto

Car Gonzalez

Co-founder and CEO · PlebLab

Eddy Hernández

VC Scout and Software Engineer

HT

CEO · Sovereign Hybrid Compute

Assets

Press kit & brand files.

Logos, venue photos, the fact sheet, boilerplate copy, and the brand palette — the same pack the press uses. Kept current, so anything you pull from it is the live version.

Download the kit (ZIP, 8.8 MB) Open the press page

Talk sponsorship.

Tell us what your team wants from the room — a session, a demo table, or presence — and we’ll send options.

Become a sponsor See the event