On April 16th, 39 teams took the stage at our San Francisco headquarters to pitch investors at Demo Day. During the prior six weeks, founders worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the Vercel team, our partners, and industry leaders to shape their ideas into the next generation of AI applications. from around the world joined the 2026 cohort, building agents, developer tools, consumer apps, and vertical AI for finance, security, healthcare, and robotics. Teams Each week, the cohort joined two sessions: a hands-on technical workshop and a fireside chat with an external speaker. The workshops covered the technical side of building AI products, from agents and models to deployment and scale.

The fireside chats brought in industry leaders, Vercel experts, and investors. Speakers included Peter Steinberger (OpenAI/OpenClaw) and the Windsurf team, with topics ranging from the state of AI to pricing, legal, sales, marketing, and fundraising. Halfway through the program, the cohort came together with the broader Vercel startup ecosystem for Builder Day at Vercel's office. The day combined technical workshops, hands-on office hours with engineers from accelerator partners like AWS and…