Llama Lounge 22 at AWS was Epic & Upcoming Agentic Hackathon

We hosted 22 pitch events --and now we will host a hackathon to build!

Author

Jeremiah Owyang
January 29, 2026

Llama Lounge Agentic Hackathon will be on Feb 27-28th in Menlo Park at Snowflake, featuring agentic startups CrewAI, Composio and Skyfire (our portfolio companies we invested in).


Last week, Llama Lounge 22 took place on January 22, 2026 at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in downtown San Francisco. The event brought together hundreds of AI founders, dozens of venture capitalists, and dozens of corporate AI buyers.

The format included open networking and a startup pitch session featuring up to 10 AI startups. The presenting companies were sourced from leading ecosystems including a16z Speedrun, Y Combinator, AI Fund, Stanford Breakthrough Ventures, and other top AI communities.

The event featured Lior Alexander of AlphaSignal, an AI media company. The pitch session was emceed by Rajiv Ayyangar, CEO of Product Hunt. The purpose of the event was to connect AI founders, investors, and enterprise buyers in one venue.

Above photo: The AI founders who will pitch, photo by Graeme Wiltrout

AI Startups that Pitch and Demo:

  1. AethexAI: Foundational voice infrastructure for MENA

  2. Amotions AI: Real-time emotion AI improving sales & CS

  3. Kanu (a16z): Your AI cloud engineer

  4. Nexxa (a16z): Specialized AI for heavy industries

  5. Oasiz (a16z): Turn ideas to games with your friends

  6. Telemetron (YC): AI support & ops for hardware companies

  7. Trainsit: AI-driven, sustainable modern rail freight solutions

  8. Zenode: AI copilot for printed circuit boards designers

Registered Attendees

VCs and Investors, backers of AI Startups:

  • Blitzscaling Ventures

  • 500 Global

  • 7BC Venture Capital

  • Acorn Pacific Ventures

  • Agate Hound Fund

  • AGI House

  • AI Fund

  • AiSprouts VC

  • Alpha Prime Capital

  • Aon Investment

  • Ares Management

  • Bay Bridge Ventures

  • Berkeley Angel Group

  • Breakthrough Ventures

  • Cathay Innovation

  • Cota Capital

  • Contrary Ventures

  • Damac Group

  • Draper TV

  • FalconX

  • Fika Ventures

  • Figma Ventures

  • G2C Ventures

  • Gaingels

  • Georgian

  • Granatus Ventures

  • Grayscale Ventures

  • Google Ventures

  • Han River Partners

  • Hanwha Ventures

  • Hesperian Ventures

  • Korea Investment Partners US

  • Ignite Ventures

  • Inception Studio

  • Insight Partners

  • InMotion Ventures | Jaguar Land Rover

  • Mesa Partners

  • NextStar Venture Partners

  • NXTP Ventures

  • OneValley Ventures

  • Onsen Ventures

  • Pachamama Ventures

  • Podium VC

  • Plug and Play

  • Presidio Ventures

  • Qualcomm Ventures

  • Race Capital

  • RoundTable Ventures

  • Sentinel Global

  • SHACK15 Ventures

  • Societe Generale

  • Sustainable Impact Capital

  • TDK Ventures

  • VU Venture Partners

  • Xirius Venture

Corporate AI Leaders, who partner with AI Startups:

  • AWS

  • Airbnb

  • Agora

  • Apple

  • Accenture

  • Adobe

  • BairesDev

  • Costco

  • Credit Karma

  • CVS Health

  • Deloitte

  • Denso

  • Deutsche Telekom

  • Docomo Innovations, Inc.

  • EY

  • Fujitsu

  • Gap Inc

  • Harvard/HBS

  • HP

  • HubSpot

  • IBM

  • Intuit

  • JLL

  • J.P. Morgan

  • LG

  • LinkedIn

  • Lucid Motors

  • Manus AI

  • Mazda Motor Corporation

  • McKinsey & Company

  • Meta

  • Microsoft

  • Mitsubishi HC Capital America, Inc.

  • Mitsubishi Research Institute

  • NVIDIA

  • OpenAI

  • Oracle

  • Palo Alto Networks

  • Qatar Airways

  • Qualcomm

  • RingCentral

  • Salesforce

  • Samsung Electronics

  • Samsung NEXT

  • Schaeffler

  • Snowflake

  • Stripe

  • Swisscom

  • Tesla

  • Uber AI services

  • Verizon

  • Volkswagen Group

  • Williams Sonoma

  • Zillow Group

  • ZoomInfo

  • Zuora