Startup.Connect 2026 will take place on October 8 at the W Hotel in Santiago, within the framework of the Digital Country Summit. This initiative, promoted by the Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) and Fundación País Digital, will bring together 16 large companies with 20 technological startups selected for their maturity, commercial traction and ability to solve specific challenges in different industries.
Among the participating corporations are Walmart, Banco de Chile, Entel, Falabella, Coca-Cola, CMPC, BancoEstado, Clínica Alemana, Sodimac, SURA, Kaufmann, Coopeuch, Agrosuper, Carozzi, Agunsa and Caja Los Andes.
Likewise, the 20 selected startups, which include Otaria, Flair, Umano, Neos AI, Ainwater, Cliperty, Obralink, Creditú and SaveMoney among others, have solutions in the areas of Fintech, Agtech, Cleantech and SaaS.
For the rest, the history of the previous edition speaks for itself: in 2025, Startup.Connect held 110 bilateral meetings between 17 corporations and 24 startups, with cases such as Soyio, which closed 2 clients of the 4 meetings it had, including Grupo Alemana and Coopeuch.
Meet&Connect: meetings prepared to close deals
The heart of the event is the Meet&Connect methodology, which prepares startups and corporations before the meeting to maximize the result of each meeting. Specifically, the process includes scouting and selection of startups, raising challenges together with corporates, commercial preparation workshops and previously coordinated one-on-one meetings.
In this way, the objective is to facilitate conversations that move towards paid pilots, contracts and commercial relationships with subsequent follow-up.
“As startups it is very difficult to reach the decision makers of large companies, and these instances are of extreme value for everyone,” said Ricardo Susaeta, co-founder of Búho, participant in the previous edition.
For her part, Paula Riquelme, Founder of Inpla, added: “We connected with several companies and one of them opened the door to the biggest opportunity we have had as a company.”
A content agenda with a focus on AI and scale
In addition to the business roundtables, the day will feature a conference by Cristóbal de Solminihac, founder of Autofact, on technological infrastructure and B2B alliances, as well as a presentation by Felipe Pacheco, Community Ambassador of Anthropic, on governance and competitive advantages of AI.
On the other hand, Ángel Morales will moderate a panel on how the startup-corporate alliance drives real transformation, with the participation of Francisca de La Piedra de Umano and executives from Walmart and Buk.
Finally, the day begins at 3:00 p.m. and all the information is available at startup.connect.udd.cl.
