SUNNYVALE, Calif. – On Oct. 5, 2025, more than 1,000 people joined the Valley101 Annual Tech Summit. Everything at the summit this year circles back to artificial intelligence.
Besides panels exploring AI’s role in different fields, the organizer introduced a startup challenge for the first time.
“Many of our followers are entrepreneurs. Over the years, I’ve received a lot of feedback from people who said our podcast inspired them to start their own businesses,” said Hongjun Liu, founder and CEO of Valley 101. “This time, we decided to host a global startup challenge to see how many founders our show could bring together.”
Eighty-four teams around the world applied, and six made it to the final round to present at the summit. They pitched live for a Golden Award of $100,000 on the spot investment from Shanda Grab Ventures. Team Sequents.ai and Team Vybers.ai walked away with the Golden Award.
“I am impressed by how collaborative the Valley101 community is. I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of this community and be acknowledged for the work that we are doing,” Gavin Wang, founder and CEO of Vybers.ai said. “At Vybers, we aim to close the human-AI communication gap, make sure humans and AI can co-exist harmoniously in the coming AI era.”
Valley101 is a media platform based in the Bay Area to capture stories on technology innovation and business transformation, whose channel has over four million subscribers across the globe.
