Web Summit Vancouver officially opened this week with more than 20,000 attendees, nearly 1,200 startups, and the largest investor turnout the North American edition of the global technology conference has ever seen.
The event welcomed 20,235 attendees from more than 100 countries to the Vancouver Convention Centre, up nearly 30 percent from last year’s edition. It also drew 768 investors, a 13 percent increase over 2025, as global capital turns its attention to Canadian and international startups gathering on the West Coast.
Over the course of the three-day event, running May 12 to 14, founders, investors, policymakers, and technology leaders will explore some of the biggest questions shaping the global economy, from the race to deploy artificial intelligence to the future of gaming, film, trade, supply chains, and clean technology.
This year’s startup program includes 1,197 companies, with AI and machine learning leading the sector mix, followed by SaaS, healthtech and wellness, fintech, and education. Major technology companies exhibiting at the event include Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, Google, IBM, and Dell Technologies.
Web Summit says the 2026 Vancouver event has also attracted government and trade delegations from countries including Cabo Verde, Italy, South Korea, Portugal, Qatar, Lithuania, and Poland.
Opening night put artificial intelligence at the centre of the conversation. Web Summit founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave framed the current moment as a contest between closed proprietary AI systems and the rise of open-source alternatives.
Canada’s first Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, also took the stage to outline Canada’s ambitions around AI and quantum technologies. He was joined by Cohere Chief AI Officer Joelle Pineau and Sigrid Jin, the developer behind Claw Code, an open-source alternative to Anthropic’s Claude Code.
Other political leaders on stage included Gregor Robertson, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Pacific Economic Development; B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey; and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.
The investor presence is one of the defining features of this year’s conference. Top venture firms on the ground include Khosla Ventures, Benchmark, Fusion Fund, Eclipse Capital, Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures, and White Star Capital, alongside corporate investors from Google, IBM, Sony, Qualcomm, and Toyota. Institutional investors including BlackRock, Brookfield, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley are also represented.
For Vancouver, the opening numbers signal the continued growth of Web Summit’s North American presence and the city’s emerging role as a gathering place for global technology, capital, and policy conversations. The conference continues through Thursday at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
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