There are two kinds of B2B founders, CROs, and CMOs in 2026: the ones who can deploy a working AI agent by Friday, and the ones who can’t.

The gap between those two groups is widening every week. Right now it’s measurable in productivity — 30%, 40%, 50% gaps in output per rep, per marketer, per support agent. By Q4 it’ll be measurable in revenue. By 2027 it’ll be measurable in headcount, valuation, and survival.

That’s the whole reason SaaStr AI Annual 2026 exists. And it’s why we built every single session around one question:

What will you actually be able to do on May 15 in AI that you couldn’t do on May 11?

Here’s the answer. Ten things. Every one tied to a real session, real speakers, and real operators who’ve already done it in production.

May 12-14. San Mateo County Events Center. 10,000+ attendees. We’re already tracking 43% ahead of last year. ~2.5 weeks left to register.

 

#1. Deploy Your First AI SDR That Actually Works.  And How To Pick the Right One

There are at least 30 AI SDR platforms now. Most B2B leaders are paralyzed by the choice and ship nothing. That’s the worst outcome.

We deployed Artisan and ran 19,000+ outbound messages over six months. 5-7% response rates vs. the 2-4% industry average. $1M+ in closed-won revenue from a single AI SDR in 90 days. Japjot Carmichael-Jack, founder and CEO of Artisan, will walk through the production playbook live at Deploy ’26.

You’ll also see Aurasell, Laridin, and a half-dozen other AI SDRs side-by-side. Six months of vendor evaluation compressed into one afternoon.

Leave knowing: which AI SDR fits your motion, how to train it in week one, what response rates to expect, and what to do when it inevitably goes off the rails.

#2. Build Your Own AI VP of Marketing — Without an Engineer

We built one. We call it 10K. It’s been running in production at SaaStr for months, and it’s a meaningful reason attendance is tracking 43% ahead of last year.

It owns campaigns. It produces content. It tracks what’s working. It iterates daily. The way a great VP of Marketing would, at a fraction of the cost.

We built it on Replit. No engineers. We’re going to show you exactly how — the prompts, the architecture, the integrations, the failure modes. You’ll leave with a working blueprint and the confidence to ship your own by the end of the month.

Headline session at Deploy ’26 on May 12.

#3. Run an AI Win-Back Campaign That Hits 72% Open Rates

We reactivated leads our human team had given up on. Agentforce drove 10%+ response rates on those leads. 72% open rates. An agent closed a $100K deal on a Saturday night while everyone else was streaming Netflix.

The Agentforce deployment session at Deploy ’26 will walk through exactly how this works at SaaStr — the setup, the training, the 6 things that almost killed the campaign, and how to replicate it inside your own Salesforce instance. 5,000+ companies have now deployed Agentforce. You’ll leave with a concrete plan for being one of them.

#4. Cut Your Inbound CAC by 30-50% With AI

Qualified processed 668,000+ sessions for SaaStr. The AI booked meetings and closed deals on its own — handled 11% of ticket revenue with zero human touch. Conversion rates from AI-sourced meetings to closed-won were higher than human-sourced meetings.

Craig Swensrud, CEO of Qualified, will walk through exactly how this works — and exactly where it breaks. Salesforce acquired them for nearly a billion. There’s a reason.

Leave knowing: how to deploy AI inbound in 30 days, what conversion lift to actually expect, and what your human SDRs should be doing instead.

#5. Restructure a 20-Person Team Into 3 Humans + Agents — Without Breaking Anything

We did this at SaaStr. 20+ humans down to 3 humans plus 20+ AI agents. Revenue went from -19% YoY to +47%. It wasn’t smooth. We almost broke the business twice.

I’ll do an honest session on what we actually did, what nearly killed us, and how Amelia — our Chief AI Officer — ended up spending 30% of her time managing agents like a manager manages a team. Because she is, in fact, managing a team.

This is the session for any CEO or COO trying to figure out the org-design version of the AI question.  We’ll walk you live through ever piece of our AI stack, let you see how it all works and is configured, and ask any and all questuions.

6. Vibe Code Your Way Across Every Function

Vibe coding is the single biggest productivity unlock most B2B leaders haven’t tapped yet. We’ve built 12+ production apps on Replit at SaaStr — the pitch deck analyzer (4,000+ decks graded), the valuation calculator (600K+ uses), Founderscape, Digital Jason (2.75M+ conversations), 10K (our AI VP of Marketing), QBee (our AI VP of Customer Success). None required hiring an engineer.

SaaStr AI Annual has a full vibe coding track for every function on your team:

• Wed, May 13, 3:30 PM — Stop Waiting on Engineering: A Vibe Coding Workshop for Founders. Bring a real problem from your company. Leave with it solved.
• Wed, May 13, 5:00 PM — Vibe Coding for Customer Success Leaders: Build Your Own QBee. CS leaders build their own AI VP of CS in 45 minutes. CS is the most under-tooled function in B2B and the one that benefits most from this.
• Thu, May 14, 9:00 AM — RevOps Who Ship: Build Your Own Pipeline Tools with Replit. Probably the highest-ROI class of the week. RevOps already thinks in systems — give them vibe coding and they become a force multiplier for the whole revenue org.
• Thu, May 14, 11:30 AM — No More Waiting for Dev: A Vibe Coding Workshop for Product Marketing Teams. Bring your PMM team. Leave with 3-5 working internal tools by lunch.
• Thu, May 14, 1:00 PM — Founders Who Ship: Build Your Own AI-Powered MVP in 30 Minutes. The closing class. For founders who came to Annual to think and want to leave having built.

Plus the Vibe Lab running all three days — drop-in build stations, live demos, head-to-head agent showdowns, and lightning demos from founders who’ve shipped real B2B apps without engineering.

And on the main stage: Amjad Masad (CEO, Replit) and Anton Osika (CEO, Lovable) doing live builds. Real apps, built live, every prompt and iteration on screen. No slides. No pre-recorded demos. The closest thing you’ll get to a masterclass in how the people who built these tools actually use them.

Leave knowing how to ship your first 3 internal tools the week you get back — and which of your team members should be doing the building.

#7. Pick the Right First 3 AI Agents for Your Stage

Most founders pick wrong. They deploy the agent that’s loudest in the market, not the one that fits their business.

The right first agent at $1M ARR is not the same as at $10M, and not the same as at $50M. We’ll have operators at each stage walking through their actual deployment sequence — what they shipped first, what they wished they’d shipped first, and what they’d do over.

Past speakers on this thread have included revenue leaders from Perplexity, Anthropic, ServiceTitan, and Owner. Expect the same caliber this year.

#8. Have the AI Conversation With Your VP Sales / VP Marketing. Without Losing Them

The hardest part. Almost no one talks about it.

If your team can’t deploy an agent by Q3, they may not be the team that takes you forward. Only about 2% of marketers have real agent deployment skills today. The other 98% are either figuring it out — or hoping the conversation goes away.

The CRO + CEO Summit on May 12 is built specifically for this. Invite-only, $40M+ ARR, capped at 100 CROs and 100 CEOs. Closed room. Chatham House rules. The conversations that don’t happen anywhere else: comp restructures under AI, quota changes, what to do with reps who refuse to adopt, how to align CEO and CRO expectations when the math has changed. Plus the Poker & Prosecco Night.

Past Summit speakers: Dmitry Shevelenko (CBO, Perplexity), Sam Blond (former CRO, Brex), Ross Biestman (CRO, ServiceTitan), Kristina Shen (Managing Partner, Chemistry).

#9. Spot AI-Washing in Vendor Pitches in Under 60 Seconds

We’ve graded 4,000+ pitch decks at SaaStr. The pattern of who’s actually built something vs. who’s wrapped GPT in a UI and called it agentic is now extremely clear.

We’ll do a live session on the exact questions to ask vendors, the demos that mean something vs. the demos that don’t, and the contractual terms that signal a vendor doesn’t believe their own product works.

The new bar: every great agent should take a customer most of the way to value before they pay a dollar. Cursor, Gamma, Lovable — that’s the standard now. Most vendors can’t meet it. Knowing how to tell which ones can will save you six figures and six months.

#10. Become The AI Agent Expert on Your Team

Right now, almost every B2B company has the same gap: nobody on the leadership team is the actual AI agent expert. Not the CEO. Not the CRO. Not the CMO. Not the VP of CS.

There’s a person at every company asking “should we deploy an agent for X?” — and a person being asked. Be the one being asked.

Only ~2% of marketers and revenue leaders have real, hands-on agent deployment experience today. That number won’t stay at 2% for long. Within 12 months, it’ll be table stakes for any senior GTM role. Within 24, you won’t get hired without it.

The fastest way to close that gap isn’t another podcast or another newsletter. It’s 2.5 days in a room with the people who’ve actually shipped — across SDR, BDR, support, success, marketing, RevOps, and finance. You’ll leave with:

• A working point of view on every major agent platform
• A deployment plan you wrote yourself, for your own company
• Direct relationships with the operators running these agents in production
• The specific vocabulary, KPIs, and frameworks that signal you’ve actually done this
• The credibility to walk into your next board meeting, your next 1:1 with your CEO, or your next interview and be the expert in the room

Founders, CROs, and CMOs who came to SaaStr AI events in 2024 and 2025 are now the AI leads inside their companies. Some got promoted. Some got recruited out at significantly higher comp. All of them stopped being the person asking and started being the person being asked.

The fastest path to that role is May 12-14.

It’s Time To Get Ahead in AI for B2B

SaaStr AI Annual 2026 is May 12-14 at the San Mateo County Events Center.

300+ sessions. 250+ speakers. 100+ VCs with Meet-a-VC matchmaking. The CRO + CEO Summit. Deploy ’26. Operators from Google Cloud, GitHub, Nvidia, Klaviyo, Snowflake, Databricks, Atlassian, Workato, Replit, Clay, Qualified, Artisan, Agentforce, Lovable, Monaco, Vivun, Attention, Momentum, Laridin, Aurasell — and a hundred more.

Everyone you’d want to learn from on AI agents in B2B — in one place, for 2.5 days.

You can read 1,000 posts about AI agents. Or you can spend 2.5 days with the people building them and leave with a real deployment plan.

We’re 43% ahead of last year on registrations. The room is filling up.

Last 2.5 weeks. Come ship.

Register for SaaStr AI Annual 2026 → 

And grab 20% OFF final tix here.