Uber’s CTO is speaking at StrictlyVC SF — here’s why that matters

StrictlyVC San Francisco just got a lot more interesting. Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga is now on the bill for the April 30 event at the Sentro Filipino Cultural Center. This is the same event that kicks off TechCrunch’s 2026 events calendar, and the lineup was already solid. Now it’s genuinely stacked.

I’ll be honest — when I first saw the announcement, I rolled my eyes a little. Another tech exec talking about AI at scale? We’ve all heard that pitch a hundred times. But then I thought about it more. Uber isn’t just any company running AI experiments. They’ve been doing machine learning in production for years, way before the current hype cycle. Their dispatch algorithms, surge pricing, ETA predictions — all of that is AI, just not the shiny generative kind everyone’s obsessed with now.

Neppalli Naga took over as CTO in late 2023, right when the generative AI boom was hitting full stride. He’s been responsible for Uber’s technical strategy through a period where the company had to figure out how to integrate LLMs and other new AI tools into a platform that already runs on a mountain of real-time data and complex logistics. That’s not trivial.

The session is titled “Operating at Scale in the Age of AI.” Vague, sure, but I’m hoping they get into the gritty details. How do you roll out AI features across millions of drivers and riders without breaking things? How do you handle the latency requirements when you’re making decisions in milliseconds? How do you deal with the fact that a bad model output in a self-driving Uber could have real consequences, not just a funny chatbot reply?

What I really want to hear is how Uber is navigating the tension between moving fast and being responsible. Uber has a history of moving fast and breaking things. AI amplifies both the speed and the potential damage. If Neppalli Naga is willing to be candid about the failures and compromises, this could be one of the more honest conversations about AI in production we’ve seen at a tech event this year.

The rest of the lineup is worth mentioning too. StrictlyVC SF always pulls in a mix of VCs, founders, and operators. The Sentro Filipino Cultural Center is a solid venue — not your typical sterile hotel ballroom. It gives the whole thing a slightly more grounded feel.

If you’re in the Bay Area and working on anything AI-related, this is probably worth your time. April 30, doors open in the afternoon. I’ll be there, probably taking notes and grumbling about the coffee. But the content should be good.