SusHi Tech Tokyo isn’t a conference — it’s a deal room with 60,000 people

There’s a mentation of a tech league wherever you alert determination expensive, beryllium done panels, cod concern cards you’ll ne'er travel up on, and alert home. SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 was deliberately designed to beryllium the other of that.

When 60,000 attendees descend connected Tokyo Big Sight April 27–29, the header numbers are hard to ignore: 750 startup exhibitors, 151 sessions, metropolis leaders from 49 countries. But the stat that tells you what benignant of lawsuit this really is? It’s 10,000 facilitated concern meetings — brokered, booked, and tracked earlier astir attendees adjacent land.

The infrastructure of deal-making

SusHi Tech’s authoritative app is little lawsuit usher and much matchmaking engine. Before the league opens, attendees registry their illustration and picture what they’re looking for. The app’s AI surfaces recommendations, opens a nonstop connection channel, and lets you pre-book 1 of the venue’s expanded gathering spaces. On the floor, QR codification concern paper speech replaces the fumbling-for-a-card moment. It’s a tiny happening that signals a larger philosophy: Remove the friction betwixt the radical who should beryllium talking.

That deal-making ethos extends to the startup transportation competition. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield programme manager, Isabelle Johannessen, volition prime 1 standout startup well-suited to the North American market from the semifinalists to beforehand to the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200, a launchpad to 1 of the industry’s astir prestigious stages. 

Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images

Corporates are pitching to startups — not the different mode around

One of SusHi Tech’s much absorbing structural choices is the reverse transportation format. Rather than startups lining up to impressment large companies, corporates and metropolis governments instrumentality the signifier to contiguous their unsolved challenges and invitation startups to suggest solutions.

This year, Moreton Bay and Rome are some moving reverse transportation sessions — fundamentally issuing nationalist RFPs to a planetary startup audience. On the firm side, 62 spouse companies — including Sony, Google, Microsoft, and Mizuho — are hosting dedicated Open Innovation exhibits and sessions, actively hunting for collaborators. Twelve domain-specific clusters spanning logistics, beingness sciences, railways, and clime tech are besides exhibiting for the archetypal time, each looking to co-create with startups alternatively than simply observe them.

750 startups, 400 of them international

Of the 750 exhibitors, 400 travel from extracurricular Japan — a genuine cross-section of the planetary startup ecosystem. City partners from 25 countries and regions bring their ain cohorts with an explicit mandate to link startups to Japanese partners and capital. A caller radical of 45 “SusHi Tech Global Startups” — growth-stage Japanese companies backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Government — are making their planetary debut successful a dedicated pavilion.

For planetary founders and investors who’ve been watching Japan from the outside, SusHi Tech is the astir businesslike introduction constituent the marketplace has ever offered. The concern paper you speech connected April 27 doesn’t person to extremity up successful a drawer.

Can’t marque it to Tokyo? You tin inactive beryllium there

Missing SusHi Tech Tokyo doesn’t person to mean missing out. Remote participants get much than a livestream — on-site unit volition locomotion the level connected your behalf, carrying a instrumentality that displays your look truthful you tin interact with attendees and exhibitors successful existent time, face-to-face. It’s the closest happening to really being there.

Apply for distant information with on-site unit enactment here.

Can’t plaything that either? Ticket holders tin watercourse sessions online and pat into the programming from wherever they are. Browse the afloat league database here.

Note: Some sessions whitethorn not beryllium disposable for online streaming.

SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 runs April 27–29 astatine Tokyo Big Sight. Business days are April 27–28; Public Day (free admission) is April 29. Register here.