But there was one financial figure that investors surely took notice of: his projection that there will be $1 trillion worth of orders for Nvidia's Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips, a monetary reflection of a booming AI business. 'Now, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but $500 billion is an enormous amount of revenue,' he said. 'Well, I'm here to tell you that right now where I stand ' a few short months after GTC DC, one year after last GTC ' right here where I stand, I see through 2027, at least $1 trillion.' The Rubin computing chip architecture, which was first announced in 2024, has been described by Huang as the state of the art in AI hardware that outperforms its Blackwell predecessor. The company said in January, when it officially started production of Rubin, it would operate 3.5x faster than the Blackwell architecture on model-training tasks and 5x faster on inference tasks, reaching as high as 50 petaflops. Actively scaling' Fundraising' Planning your next launch'TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 delivers tactical playbooks and direct access to 1,000+ founders and investors who are building, backing, and closing....

Rox was founded in 2024 by the former chief growth officer of New Relic, Ishan Mukherjee. Mukherjee joined New Relic following its 2010 acquisition of Pixie, a software monitoring startup he co-founded. The startup positions itself as an intelligent revenue operating system that plugs into a company's current software setup'from Salesforce to Zendesk ' and deploys hundreds of AI agents. These agents monitor existing accounts, research prospects, and update CRM software. By consolidating these functions, Rox aims to replace and streamline numerous fragmented software solutions currently used by sales teams. 'Rox's unique system of AI agents levels up the CRM experience,' GV investor Dave Munichiello wrote in a 2024 blog post when announcing the Series A round. 'These agents work constantly behind the scenes to monitor customer activity, identify potential risks and opportunities, and even suggest the best course of action.' Rox's competition spans several categories, including established revenue intelligence providers like Gong and Clari, as well as AI sales development platforms such as 11x and Artisan. There is also steady stream of new AI-native, all-in-one CRM competitors joining the field, such as Monaco ' a startup founded by Sam Blond, the former president of corporate spending platform Brex ' which launched out of stealth last month....

Now when Spotify users browse an artist's page or upcoming tour dates, they will see ticket links powered by SeatGeek for concerts at these participating venues, allowing for a streamlined purchase process. Currently, the integration is available for a select group of venues where SeatGeek serves as the primary ticket seller. Specifically, it covers SeatGeek's 15 major U.S. venue partners, including State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Nissan Stadium in Nashville, and AT&T Stadium in Arlington. (So, although SeatGeek is a major player in the secondary ticketing space, this integration is exclusive to venues where it operates as the primary ticketing platform.) This is a strategic win for SeatGeek. With direct placement in the Spotify app, SeatGeek is positioned to reach millions of active music fans as they discover upcoming events, increasing the chances of converting listeners into ticket buyers. These rivals command a greater share of the ticketing market, bolstered by long-term contracts with many top venues and event organizers. It's estimated that Ticketmaster alone services 53 of the top 68 U.S. arenas. Even Barclays Center, which switched from Ticketmaster to SeatGeek in 2021, quickly reversed course less than a year into a seven-year agreement and ended the deal to return to Ticketmaster....

When selling radical innovations, salespeople often worry that they'll appear incompetent, which undermines their confidence and stalls sales pipelines. New products' complexity can get in the way of knowledge transfer via traditional training approaches. Companies should instead reframe the salesperson's role from expert to orchestrator, provide consultation support through expert tandems and fast-response channels, and foster a culture that values curiosity and collaboration over perfection. Across industries, companies are investing heavily in radical innovations, such as new software layers for traditional hardware, AI-powered industrial tools, and smart services that promise to transform how customers create value. Yet, when these offerings reach the market, sales pipelines often stall. Salesforce, for example, struggled with the early commercialization of a radical innovation launched in 2016: Einstein, an AI add-on to the Salesforce CRM system. Managers often assume that the problem stems from customers' risk aversion or the product's limited technical maturity. Our research points to a human factor on the supplier side: sales professionals' fear of losing face when discussing something radically new....