If You Missed Alibaba CoCreate in Los Angeles, Here's My Recap

On September 10th I spent the day at Alibaba CoCreate in Los Angeles — this year it took over the LA Convention Center for two days (September 9–10), and it was all about AI: how to run your business smarter with it, and how global trade is shifting from business-to-business to what they're calling agent-to-agent commerce.

The scale was serious: 100+ speakers, more than 200 global suppliers exhibiting, and 10,000+ founders, buyers, and operators in the building. The exhibitor floor spanned consumer tech, style and beauty, health and sports, home and living, mobility, industrial and construction, and packaging and print — plus service providers like Fiserv on payments and ShipBae on AI-powered cross-border shipping. Basically everything a small business needs to source, make, and move a product, in one convention hall.

I walked the floor with two questions in mind: is there anything here for my hostel brand, PodShare? And is there anything here for Deadline, my future-of-technology booking site (yes, there's an AI component in that too)?

Three conversations stood out.

Plug and Play. They partnered with Alibaba on this year's pitch competition, and I got a chance to pitch Kristen on what I do — turns out they have a hospitality arm. That's exactly the kind of partner that makes sense for both PodShare and Deadline.

World Trade Center Los Angeles. A good conversation about what they're doing for LA businesses going global.

A venture capitalist. We talked, and there's a real chance of a meeting coming out of it.

The centerpiece of the whole event was the CoCreate Pitch 2026 U.S. final — an AI product-innovation competition, powered by Alibaba's enterprise AI agent Accio. Nearly 50,000 founders applied worldwide; 20 made it to the live final in LA, pitching for a share of a $1M+ global prize pool.

The winners, announced that day:

Gold ($200,000): Apricotton, co-founded by Chloe Beaudoin — bras designed to grow with girls through every stage of puberty, built around a viral "older sister" community of 300,000+ followers.

Silver ($100,000): FEND, co-founded by Sujene Kong and Christian Heifner — patented, safety-certified helmets for urban commuters that fold by 50% to fit in a bag.

Bronze ($50,000): HoopDee Hoops, founded by Roxie Alsruhe — reusable, battery-free NFC silicone rings that fit any baby bottle and track breast milk and formula in a companion app.

The other 17 finalists each took home $10,000. (Every award is half cash, half Alibaba.com credits — which tells you exactly what business Alibaba is in.)

Honestly, one of the coolest parts of the day was just watching. After all the pitching I've done myself, it was genuinely fun to sit back and watch twenty founders do the life-changing thing for once.

That's the recap. If you were there, I'd love to hear what you took away from it.

Watch the video version here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-Fz0Odki1WU