TechCrunch might be on the bottom at SXSW 2025 — the annual tech, music, comedy, and movie convention that kicked off Friday in Austin — looking for the zeitgeist of this AI-centric period.
Yup, we’re one sentence in and AI has already made its entrance. And why not? A fast scan of the large SXSW schedule illustrates that AI is on middle stage in Austin — and globally. It’s price noting that this yr there appears to be an emphasis on how AI is being utilized to the actual world, not simply hypothesis on what it could possibly be.
SXSW tends to mirror what the tech ecosystem of founders and backers are engaged on. And it typically coincides with the hype cycle. Autonomous autos, scooter mania, crypto, psychedelics — they’ve all had their second at SXSW.
The tech portion of the annual occasion kicked off Friday and can run by way of March 13. The convention begins with a number of tracks that fall squarely in TechCrunch’s space of curiosity, together with the creator economic system, tradition, startups, well being and medtech, and power. The AI monitor formally begins Sunday, but it surely’s already making cameos. As an illustration, Sign President Meredith Whittaker, who was interviewed on stage Friday, known as out agentic AI as a safety and privateness menace, and a well being skilled warned that it could possibly harmful for individuals to be too reliant on AI for companionship.
Deep tech like area and quantum computing may even make its mark on the present, as will local weather, sustainability — look out for Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe’s keynote March 11 — and transportation.
Autonomous autos are again, however this time they’re on the highway — not simply the subject of dialog in a panel. Earlier this week, Uber and Waymo launched a robotaxi service in Austin. The so-called “Waymo on Uber” robotaxi service is on the market to any member of the general public who has an Uber account. And also you higher consider TechCrunch might be hailing these robots and speaking to human Uber drivers about what they assume.
TechCrunch may even be speaking to the VCs, founders, and trade consultants at SXSW to get the heartbeat of how the tech world is adjusting to the Trump administration and, in fact, to search out the following new new factor. We’ll even be listening to the quite a few keynotes and interviews with tech and enterprise luminaries, notably Alan Baratz of D-Wave Quantum, Qualcomm President and CEO Christano Amon, Colossal Biosciences founder Ban Lamm, and Arm CEO Rene Haas.
Don’t fear, we’ll have a little bit of enjoyable, too.
