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Most B2B + AI companies are locking their 2027 event budgets between now and January. Most will spread that budget across too many events, picked from lists built on organizer press releases. By Q3, half of those booths will have produced nothing anyone can trace to revenue. We run SaaStr AI Annual, so discount this post accordingly. We’re also going to do what almost no event organizer does: publish lead counts by sponsor from last year, name the companies, and tell you to call them. SaaStr AI Annual 2027 (“Agentfest”) is May 11-12, 2027 at the San Mateo County Event Center in the SF Bay Area. And it’s already running way ahead of 2026. The 2026 Leaderboard: 1,423 Leads at #1, 605 at #9 Here are the top nine sponsors at SaaStr AI Annual 2026, ranked by leads: - Replit: 1,423 leads (#1 in Vibe Coding / AI Dev Tools) - Lightfield: 1,062 leads (#1 in AI-Native CRM & Revenue OS) - Aurasell: 1,046 leads - Salesforce: 1,027 leads (#1 in All-in-One CRM, API & Platform) - Rippling: 921 leads (#1 in HR & Payroll) - OpenRouter: 915 leads (#1 in AI Infrastructure) - Google for Startups: 817 leads (#1 in Startup Ecosystem) - Vivun: 793 leads (#1 in AI Sales Agents & Automation) - Lovable: 605 leads Those nine sponsors pulled 8,609 leads between them, an average of 957 each. Six of the nine cleared 900. The #9 sponsor still left with more than 600. The rest of the top 25 included Revolut Business, Artisan, Aircall, Relevance AI, Reevo, Glyphic, Vercel, Firebolt, Booking.com, Worldpay, G2, Airwallex, Orca, Backstory, and HappyFox. 14 Sponsors Finished #1 in Their Category, and Half Don’t Sell to Sales Teams The obvious read on a B2B + AI event is that it works for sales tools. Sales tools did well: Lightfield, Aurasell, Salesforce, and Vivun all landed in the top eight, and an AI-native CRM finished ahead of Salesforce by 35 leads. The less obvious read is in the category winners. Fourteen sponsors on the board finished #1 in their category: - Building: Replit (vibe coding), OpenRouter (AI infrastructure), Relevance AI (AI agents / no-code), Firebolt (data & analytics) - Revenue: Lightfield (AI-native CRM), Salesforce (CRM platform), Vivun (AI sales agents), Orca (customer reference management), G2 (software marketplace) - Running the company: Rippling (HR & payroll), Revolut Business (fintech & payments), Aircall (customer support & comms), Booking.com (business travel) - Ecosystem: Google for Startups Rippling did 921 leads selling HR and payroll. Booking.com and Revolut won their categories selling travel and banking. None of that is GTM software. The reason is who walks the floor. A founder or CEO at a $5M-$100M ARR company buys the CRM, the payroll system, the corporate card, the dev tools, and the travel platform. A CRO at the same company owns a seven-figure tool budget. At most conferences you reach one function. Here you reach the person who signs for all of them. What Those Leads Turned Into After the Event Lead counts are an input. Here’s what sponsors told us happened next. Monaco: Sam Blond, ex-CRO of Brex and now at Monaco, said they closed four five-figure deals sourced from SaaStr AI Annual in under three weeks, the highest-ROI event they had measured. They came back as a Diamond sponsor. Artisan: By Artisan’s own numbers, 634 qualified leads, $249K in ARR closed on-site, $2M in pipeline, and $1M+ closed in just the few months after. Their CEO ran a live demo of their AI BDR on the main stage in 2026. Aurasell: Their head of event marketing called it the busiest booth on the show floor and they are back bigger for 2027. Their founding SDR posted that one company switched to Aurasell five days after first meeting them at the booth. Replit: #1 on the leaderboard by 361 leads, and a returning Diamond sponsor. The room is full of founders and executives who now build their own internal tools and agents, and Replit’s booth became the place they came to do it. All of these numbers come from the sponsors themselves or from our own leaderboard. Ask us for references, then call them and ask what closed. Why a May Slot Matters for Your 2027 Pipeline Math The calendar position is underrated in most event planning. A lead captured May 11-12 has two full quarters to close inside the same fiscal year for most companies. A typical $20K-$100K B2B deal with a 60-120 day cycle lands in Q3. Larger deals land in Q4. The event pays for itself in the year you booked it. Here’s how the spring 2027 calendar shapes up for AI + B2B buyers: - AI for Marketers Summit: February 24-25, Las Vegas. Narrow, marketing-only. - HumanX: March 7-10, Las Vegas. Broad AI focus. - Google Cloud Next: April 13-15, Las Vegas. 32,000+ on-site in 2026 by Google’s count, mostly CIOs, CTOs, architects, and developers. Works best if you co-sell with Google or sell on its marketplace. - SaaStr AI Annual: May 11-12, SF Bay Area. Founders, CEOs, CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and VCs. - Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo: June 7-9, Denver. Enterprise marketing leaders, expensive, analyst-driven. Check the health of the organizer’s events business too. Gartner’s conferences revenue grew 15.5% year over year in Q2 2026. Forrester’s events revenue fell 17% in the same quarter. A shrinking events P&L usually means a smaller room than the brand implies. 10,000+ Attendees and 3,000+ Scheduled Meetings in Two Days For 2027, the plan is: - 10,000+ attendees: founders, CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and venture capitalists - 3,000+ scheduled 1-on-1 meetings through our “Who Do You Want to Meet” matchmaking app - 200+ speakers from leading B2B and AI companies - 100+ deep-dive workshops on AI-native GTM, sales, marketing, customer success, and product - Dedicated CRO, CMO, and CCO Summits for senior revenue and marketing leaders - A full week of side events across the Bay Area The scheduled meetings matter most for sponsors. A pre-booked 30 minutes with a VP Sales who picked you in the app converts very differently from a badge scan at 4pm on day two. What Separated #1 From #25 on the Floor Looking at who finished at the top in 2026, three things showed up repeatedly: They had a one-line answer to “what do you do.” Replit, Rippling, and OpenRouter can each be explained in five words. A buyer walking past 100 booths gives you about four seconds. They combined booth and stage. Artisan’s live on-stage demo drove traffic straight to the floor. The sponsors with a speaking slot, a workshop, or a summit presence pulled more from the same booth footprint. They booked meetings before the event. The top finishers used the matchmaking app in the weeks prior, so day one started with a calendar, not a hope. Questions to Ask Us Before You Sign Ask every organizer the same questions, including us: - How many leads did each sponsor in my category get last year? Ask for actual counts, not ranges in a deck. - Who controls budget in that room? One CRO with a real tool budget is worth 50 practitioners. - How many sponsors am I competing with for attention? - Can I talk to three sponsors from last year, one of whom didn’t renew? We’ll answer all four. Lock the May Slot Before Your Q1 Budget Closes Most of the companies at the top of the 2026 leaderboard are already in for 2027 or in conversations now. The sponsors who do best book early enough to get stage time, a summit slot, and a booth location with traffic, and early enough to start booking meetings in the app the moment it opens. If your 2027 plan has room for one major spring event, put SaaStr AI Annual in it, May 11-12, 2027, and check the math against the numbers above.
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