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SF IRL - May 26th, 2026

A curated newsletter showcasing the top tech & startup events in San Francisco

Author

Jonathan Chang
May 25, 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 #196.

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!

Lightfield is an AI-native CRM that remembers everything, then acts on it. It automatically captures and organizes every customer conversation across email, meetings, and notes, creating your team’s collective customer memory. Try Lightfield free today.

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. 

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

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8:30pm

What: ​​Join industry leaders from Anthropic, Rootly AI, Port, Descope, and Twingate for an evening dedicated to the practical realities of deploying agentic AI at scale. We’re moving past the hype to discuss how the world’s most sophisticated engineering teams are building secure, reliable, and developer-friendly AI ecosystems.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:45-8:45pm

What: Most people using tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Conductor, and custom agents are still figuring things out in isolation. Workflows are changing quickly, best practices are uneven, and a lot of the most useful knowledge is stuck in private projects, side conversations, and scattered online posts.

​BSOTA brings those builders into the same room.

​Each session starts with a few live walkthroughs from people actively using agentic tools in their work. Speakers show their actual setups: what tools they use, how their workflows are structured, what has improved their output, and what still breaks.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Agent builders are explaining how they solved their toughest challenges. You will not learn this stuff from a blog post. The interesting parts of the failures don't get written down.

Most of the useful lessons come from discussing real production issues with other builders in the room.

Who should attend: Agent builders

Location: San Francisco

Time: 11am-3pm

What: Join HeyGen's Infinitely Me pop-up in May, coming back to San Francisco!

This is an invite-only experience for the builders, creators, and visionaries shaping what's next in AI!

This is a drop-in networking event — feel free to come by anytime throughout the day.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: ​A private gathering of AI technical leaders exploring the economics and architecture of running AI teams at scale.

Managing Token Burn

​As AI agents take on more of the engineering workload, token spend is becoming a first-class infrastructure cost. This dinner brings together CTOs to share what's actually working - and what isn't.

  • ​How do you benchmark and budget token spend per task?

  • ​Orchestration patterns that reduce wasted context

  • ​When to use smaller, cheaper models vs frontier models

  • ​Scaling AI teams without runaway inference costs

Location: Berkeley

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

What: Space is commercializing fast.

Launch costs have collapsed. LEO is crowded. And the Moon? It's the next surface where private companies, not just governments, will operate at scale.

NASA's Moon-to-Mars architecture and the $4.2B CLPS contract are pulling commercial providers onto the lunar surface. A growing stack of startups is building the launch, data, infrastructure, and autonomy layers underneath. The question isn't if - it's who, how fast, and where the gaps are.

MoonTech: The New Space Economy brings together engineers, space VCs, and industry leaders to dig into where the new space economy is actually heading, with the Moon as the anchor case.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:-8pm

What: Our networking events bring together young professionals in their mid-20s to mid-30s from all backgrounds—founders, creatives, job seekers, investors, and curious minds alike. Whether you're growing a startup, exploring new opportunities, or just curious to connect, you'll find your community here.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6-8:30pm

What: Join technical leaders from Nooks, Decagon, Parallel, and OpenAI for a deep dive on the emerging product engineer-- the technical operator who owns the full motion.

​Today, the top 1% of engineers are not just shipping. They're shaping what gets built AND how it reaches market.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8-10am

What: Join us for a breakfast hosted by Alchemi Ventures (of Chemonics International) and Cathay Innovation during San Francisco Fintech Week in May 2026, exploring how financial technology is transforming emerging markets.

May 28th, 2026 - AI Insiders: Fintech & Payments

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-8:30pm

What: The Money Is Moving.

​Stablecoins are replacing rails that took decades to build. Agentic wallets are making decisions that used to require humans. AI is underwriting loans, catching fraud before it happens, and moving money across borders in seconds.

​The financial system is being rewritten in real time. The founders, operators, and investors leading the shift live in a few zip codes. On May 28, they are in one room.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 4-7pm

What: ​Introducing our first Founders Residency:

​• 6 founders
• Batch 0
• All in, building in San Francisco

​Batch 0 founders aren't starting from zero. They're repeat builders, already running ~$1M ARR pipelines across profitable AI companies and longevity ventures, with angels like Balaji already in.

​Come see what they’ve been building over the past 2 months.

​If you're an investor, please register with your investor email.

May 28th, 2026 - How I Met My VC

Location: Menlo Park

Time: 4:30-7:30pm

What: ​What does it actually take to make an investor say yes?

​On May 28th, we're finding out.

​Roya Amini-Naieni is a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder and Co-Founder and CEO of Trilobio, a unified robotics and software platform that makes lab automation more accessible, scalable, and usable for modern biology teams.

​Andrew Sather is a Partner at Initialized Capital, a venture firm whose portfolio includes Coinbase, Rippling, Reddit, and Instacart. He is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in frontier technology, space, and robotics.

​Together, they're sitting down with Venturous Counsel to talk about what made Initialized Capital say yes to Trilobio and what it took to get there. Trilobio closed an oversubscribed $8M seed round led by Initialized Capital, and Roya and Andrew will walk us through what made the investor say yes, with a focus on making a complex startup easy to believe in.

May 28th, 2026 - Agentic Engineering Leadership Dinner | San Francisco

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-8:30pm

What: ​Join Port CEO Zohar Einy and a curated group of senior Platform Engineering leaders for a private evening at Ozumo.

​Hosted in Ozumo’s private Pine Room overlooking the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the evening is designed for peer-level conversation around the future of Agentic Engineering, alongside an exclusive bluefin tuna carving experience and intimate discussions with leaders building modern engineering platforms.

May 28th, 2026 - Edge Cases by AGI, Inc. #002 on Near-Memory Execution for LLMs with Lead Architect @NVIDIA

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5-7:30pm

What: ​A lot of the edge AI work we find interesting is either pre-print or too niche. With the Edge Cases we're creating a space for these topics.

​Every other week at AGI HQ, one researcher takes the room through a paper or a work-in-progress. On-device inference, small models, efficient training, anything that lives on constrained hardware.

May 28th, 2026 - Technical Talk with Thariq Shihipar — Anthropic

Location: San Francisco

Time: 12-1pm

What: South Park Commons is delighted to host Thariq Shihipar, Anthropic staff member and SPC alum, for a technical fireside chat.

Prior to Anthropic, Thariq founded a gaming company that raised $17M, sold a SaaS startup, launched a non-profit, and conducted research at the MIT Media Lab before joining SPC in 2024. During his time as an SPC member, he explored a wide range of research threads and ideas, and is now helping build Claude Code—one of the fastest-growing products in history. We're thrilled to welcome him back to SPC to hear about his experience building at the frontier.

May 28th, 2026 - design eng club x design film club : general magic screening

Location: San Francisco

Time: 5:30-9pm

What: A screening of General Magic - the documentary about the visionary team that imagined the smartphone years before the world was ready for it.

What was originally planned as a screening + Q&A a few months ago somehow turned into such a thoughtful, delightful discussion with Marc Porat (founder of General Magic) and members of the early team, Mike Stern, Richard Miller, and Dee Gardetti (BIG thank you to Soleio for moderating) - that we never even made it to the movie.

May 28th, 2026 - AI + Health Demo Night #11 @ Pebblebed Ventures

Location: San Francisco

Time: 6:30-9pm

What: Come join us for our next demo night!

With so much happening across foundation model updates and new hardware, we're excited to bring the community together over real demos.

Demo spots will be prioritized for those with current traction, and everyone is invited to share during the open mic.

Location: Mountain View

Time: 1-6:30pm

What: ​An evening bringing together some of the most exciting AI and deeptech startups across Silicon Valley and beyond.

​We are selecting a small group of founders to present their companies in front of investors, operators, technical builders, and ecosystem leaders. Top teams will earn sponsored trips to Asia (Location announced at Demo Day) to compete in the global finals with USD 10M+ prize pool this July.

​Whether you are building AI infrastructure, robotics, biotech, developer tools, or next-generation hardware, this is an opportunity to showcase your work, meet strong people in the ecosystem, and connect with potential investors and partners.​

Location: San Francisco

Time: 8am

What: On Saturday May 30th, join Modal, OpenAI, Raindrop and Antler for an Autoresearch Systems Hackathon, a full day dedicated to building the systems that enable agents to iteratively plan, search, and synthesize information over extended horizons.

Location: San Francisco

Time: 7-10pm

What: Night 1 of Snowflake Summit starts here. High Tide at The Dive is an invite-only evening of drinks, a DJ set, and good company with teams from MotherDuck, Braintrust, Hex, Reducto and Airbyte. Come up for air with us.

Location: Hillsbourogh

Time: 11:30am

What: Two days for app developers, AI builders, and product founders, built around the parts WWDC doesn't cover.

🎁 Prizes worth showing up for: Mac mini and Meta Glasses!

Day 1. The working playbook. A panel on what AI-first actually means for product decisions and how on-device vs. on-cloud affects them. A live demo of shipping an AI app without burning your margin. A hot-chair session on monetizing outside the App Store, with people who've done it.

Day 2. WWDC keynote watch party, then hands-on. Watch the Apple keynote in a room of your peers. Group breakdown of what it really means once the hype clears. Then, workshops, pick your track:

June 11th, 2026 - StartOut Con

Location: San Francisco

What: Get ready to experience the future of LGBTQ+ entrepreneurship and innovation at StartOut Con 2026—a high-energy, game-changing 2-day event that’s redefining what it means to disrupt industries and build a more equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Join us in San Francisco this Pride Month in person and connect with the trailblazers, dreamers, and doers driving progress at the intersection of innovation and inclusion.

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