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- SF IRL - Feb 9th, 2026
SF IRL - Feb 9th, 2026
A curated newsletter showcasing the top tech & startup events in San Francisco
Jonathan Chang
February 09, 2026
Hi SF IRL! There's a ton of vibrance and energy coming back into the city and at SF IRL, we are excited to be a part of it. Excited to come with you all with some great events for Issue #181.
I'm Jonathan, the creator of SF IRL. I've been a Bay Area resident all my life and moved into San Francisco about 5 years ago. My vision for SF IRL is simple. Showcase the best tech + startup events in SF and to connect all of our builders and investors together. We are a growing community having over 10000+ subscribers. As we keep growing, if you enjoy reading these, please share this with your friends so we can hit 11,000 readers. As always, SF IRL is one of my many side projects. If you like to be involved in helping, please shoot me an email!
Excited to say SF IRL has partnered with ElevenLabs to give founders 33 million in ElevenLabs credits or equivalent to $4k to build voice AI agents.
Check Out the ElevenLabs Startup Grant & use code 11SFIRL723 for expedited review. We believe voice is the most natural way to communicate, and the future of human-AI interaction depends on making those conversations feel real. The ElevenLabs Grants Program exists to give early-stage startups and small teams the tools they need to build the future of AI audio with the best tools available, without cost being a blocker. ElevenLabs is the complete conversational agents platform, so whether a startup is creating an AI tutor, support assistant, or the next generation of voice-powered game characters, the grant will provide them with 12 months and 33 million characters of free access to ElevenLabs' cutting-edge AI audio, equivalent to over 600 hours of audio.
Sponsored
Feb 19th, 2026 - Voice, AI Agents & Search: An ElevenLabs x Exa SF Founders Mixer
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-9:30pm
What: Join us for an evening exploring the intersection of voice AI, autonomous agents, and next-generation search.
ElevenLabs and Exa are bringing together founders in San Francisco to discuss what's next at the frontier of these rapidly evolving technologies.
Come meet researchers and engineers from ElevenLabs and Exa to explore how you can supercharge what you are building!
Food and drinks will be provided. Looking forward to seeing you there.
I’ve made a form to connect the best founders raising with my list of VCs. If you are a founder raising your next round and want to potentially be featured to investors in the SF IRL network, please fill out this form.
I’m launching a newsletter that will feature the top founders looking to hire, founders looking for their cofounder, and operators that are looking for their next role. If you are interested in being featured, fill this form here.
You can subscribe to Day Zero here.
Events Coming Up
Feb 10th, 2026 - Galentine's Vibe Coding Night with v0
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
What: Grab your laptop and your favorite galentines — we're building together!
Join us for an evening of vibe coding, live demos, and networking in San Francisco. Whether you've been experimenting with v0 or you're curious what all the hype is about, this is your chance to learn, create, and connect with other women exploring AI.
Feb 10th, 2026 - Hacking Agents AI Meetup - February Edition
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5-9pm
What: Hey Bay Area AI enthusiasts! Ready to connect, learn, and have some fun? Join us for The SF Bay Area Hacking Agents meetup hosted by IBM.
Whether you're an AI developer, engineer, or just someone excited to learn more, this meetup is the perfect spot to mingle, share ideas, and geek out about all things AI.
RAG, MCP, NPU, oh my! Join us for a night of code, learning, and presentations by developers and AI enthusiasts who are building 👩💻 Light refreshments will be served.
Feb 10th, 2026 - Zero to Enterprise
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Kyle Bhiro, Co-Founder of Pensar, ships products to—and closes deals with—customers ranging from early-stage startups to financial institutions. Join us for a conversation on building trustworthy products, getting technical buy-in, and what enterprise-readiness looks like.
Feb 10th, 2026 - AI Journal Club for Researchers ft. Ben Coleman (Google Deepmind)
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Join the Workato AI Research Lab for small, discussion-driven sessions with fellow AI researchers.
These gatherings will bring together researchers to share recent papers, discuss ongoing work, and exchange perspectives on how AI research is shaping real world systems. The focus is on open dialogue, technical depth, and learning from peers working at the forefront of their field.
Feb 11th, 2026 - AI Healthtech Night | Anthropic, DigitalOcean, & Workato
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8pm
What: Join our DigitalOcean, Anthropic, and Workato Agentic Healthtech Night meetup!
Featured Speakers
- Chloe Condon, Developer Advocate at Workato
- Lizzie Siegle, Developer Advocate at DigitalOcean
- Martin Amps, Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic
Feb 11th, 2026 - Twill & Amberflo Present: Enterprise AI Workshop Series Kickoff
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8:30pm
What: Join us for the debut of an Enterprise AI Workshop Series co-hosted by Twill and Amberflo! This first in-person workshop (with more to follow across the U.S. and online globally) will get you hands-on with a new toolset and framework for implementing AI at scale in the enterprise.
Feb 12th, 2026 - SPC Demo NightP
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-9:30pm
What: Join our first demo night of 2026! Come see:
Gray Crawford (Neophon)
Benjamin Zweig (SPC)
Feb 12th, 2026 - Generative UI Night at WorkOS (Feat A2UI, AG-UI, MCP Apps)
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-8:30pm
What: As Naval said "UI is pre-AI"
AI is re-shaping UI and how we interact with software. Agents require new paradigms for how the backend and frontend interact.
This is by far the best roster of speakers gathered on this topic, where you will hear from the leaders in the emerging Generative UI space.
Feb 12th, 2026 - ⛷️ Ski Camp AI: Building Agents and MCP
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8:30pm
What: Camp AI is back by popular demand with a winter twist: Ski Camp AI on February 12, in San Francisco ⛷️ with speakers from Anthropic, Mintlify, Atomicwork, Inkeep AI, and Tusk AI.
Tech founders, builders, and enthusiasts are invited to an evening of demos, a panel discussion, and conversations around AI and MCP development. This is a chance to network with up-and-coming startups and leaders developing AI technologies.
Feb 12th, 2026 - Robot Demo Day
Location: San Francisco
Time: 5:30-8:30pm
What: Have you built an awesome robot, research or other robotics related project? Here's your opportunity to show it off to the world. Join us for a night of robot demos and meet fellow builders.
Feb 13th, 2026 - Artifact Festival
Location: San Francisco
Time: 4-8pm
What: 20 teams spent the last five weeks building their artifact at Fort Mason. AI cameras. Voice agents. Facade-cleaning robots. World models that run on your laptop. And 100+ more.
Now they're ready to show you.
Join us February 13 4pm for the Artifact finale — working products, robots, first demos, and things you can actually touch and try.
Feb 14th, 2026 - Build What You Love - Women in Tech Hackathon
Location: San Francisco
Time: 9am-5pm
What: Following a series of successful community-first hackathons, we’re hosting the largest hybrid AI hackathon for women and nonbinary folks in tech — with in-person attendance in the Bay Area and a fully supported virtual experience.
We’re proud to be supported by Replit, Vercel, Daytona, MiniMax, and BEM, helping make this an accessible, high-impact build experience for our community.
Feb 15th, 2026 - Tech Original Games.
Location: San Francisco
Time: 10am-8pm
What: Tech Original Games 🔥
tired of tech hackathons? we said f*ck it. let’s make this fun.
squid game for founders.
50 founders from around the world come to SF 🇺🇸 on Feb 15 to compete for a single INSANE prize 🤙 and the title of Best Tech Founder 🥇
5 levels. 1 day. pure entertainment.
Feb 15th, 2026 - Fortune Cookies & Code: Fortune, Prediction, and Data Traces
Location: San Francisco
Time: 12-2pm
What: What kinds of fortunes do cookies predict?
Web cookies work quietly in the background, recording movements, preferences, and habits in a language written for machines rather than people. They feed systems that predict what we might do next—what we will buy, click, fear, or desire—often producing consequences that are difficult to see, contest, or refuse. Fortune cookies offer a more visible and familiar scene of prediction: a message cracked open at the end of a meal, taken seriously when it resonates and dismissed as a joke when it does not.
Feb 16th, 2026 - Builders Night @ The Commons
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6:30-9pm
What: Join us for Builders Night @ The Commons, a space for creators to make real progress, swap ideas, and fuel their projects with collective energy.
✨ Kickoff – Share what you’re working on and set your intention for the night.
💻 Deep Work Sprint – ~2 hours of focused, side-by-side building.
📣 Share-Back – Reflect on what you built, learned, or discovered.
Feb 16th, 2026 - Future of AI - Fireside w/ CTO of Microsoft For Startups
Location: San Francisco
Time: 6-9pm
What: An in-depth conversation with one of the most plugged-in technical leaders shaping the future of startup innovation.
Rob Ferguson will break down what he’s seeing across AI, infra, early-stage product velocity, and what separates the teams that scale from the ones that stall.
Feb 19th, 2026 - The 2026 Fundraising Playbook: What Founders Must Do Today
Location: Palo Alto
Time: 5:30-8pm
What: Join us for an in-depth conversation with four leading investors as they break down how fundraising will evolve in 2026 — the new expectations, the metrics that matter, and how early-stage founders can position themselves to win in a rapidly shifting market.
This event is designed for founders actively exploring fundraising, and anyone building in AI, SaaS, or frontier tech. You'll walk away with a clear understanding of what investors are looking for today, what’s changing, and how to adapt your strategy now so you’re not left behind.
Feb 21st, 2026 - RETURN OF THE AGENTS - Hackathon
Location: San Francisco
Time: 9am-9:30pm
What: Build the future of Generative AI. Selected teams will be considered for Afore Capital’s pre-seed program ($500k–$2M+).
Following the success of Agent Foundry, Return of the Agents is the third and final installment in our trilogy of hackathons — pushing the frontier of generative AI. This exclusive gathering convenes top founders, ambitious developers, and frontier researchers to create venture-scale products.
Return of the Agents is a hybrid hackathon - anchored by an in-person build weekend, with remote participation available for select teams.
Over one high-energy weekend, 500+ hand-selected builders will design, prototype, and deploy groundbreaking systems — from state-of-the-art image and video generation to multimodal platforms redefining how we create, communicate, and collaborate.
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