Event Tech & AI News Roundup - May 2026
Photo Credit: Unsplash / Visual Karsa
Skift Take
The event tech market is shrinking even as its capabilities expand, with every AI integration raising the bar for what planners expect out of the tools.
Read previous event tech & AI roundups here.
Two themes are running through event tech right now: AI is becoming the connective tissue between platforms, planners and attendees, and the market is consolidating fast.
On the AI side, the shift is moving beyond chatbots. Vendors are opening up their data to the AI tools planners already use, building copilots that guide attendees in real time, and rethinking how lead capture, follow-up and reporting can run automatically rather than manually.
At the same time, acquisitions are reshaping the competitive landscape, established platforms are absorbing new capabilities, and several major players are entering this next phase under new leadership.
Here's what's new:
Bizzabo introduced Bizzy, an AI attendee copilot in the Bizzabo mobile event app that answers attendee questions, helps navigate agendas and venues, surfaces sessions and speakers and suggests networking matches.
Brandlive rebranded Hubilo — which it acquired in November — as VirtualPRO by Brandlive. Hubilo's previous channels are being consolidated, and updates will be published on the Brandlive page going forward.
Cvent completed its acquisition of ON24. Cvent said it plans to continue investing in the ON24 platform, with a focus on AI, enterprise reliability and compliance.
Event Tech Atlas, the event technology tool comparison site, launched version 2.0, adding AI-powered search and a tech stack tracker, allowing users to log their tools, store contract costs and receive renewal reminders.
Eventbrite laid off a large portion of its pre-acquisition team. Bending Spoons engineers and designers have been embedded into the product team under new general manager Andrea Parodi. Developers have been focused on improving the speed and design of the site, including adding mobile wallet support.
Hivr has launched an agentic AI tool, co-developed with Radisson Hotel Group, that automates and streamlines the processing rooming lists for groups and meetings.
Mobly relaunched as an AI-native platform for B2B field and event marketing teams that covers event selection, cost estimation, registration, lead capture, follow-ups and post-event reporting.
Stova, the company launched in June 2022 through the merger of MeetingPlay, Aventri and Eventcore, has promoted Anupam Palit, previously president and chief financial officer, to CEO. Former CEO Kirk Ziehm moves to vice chairman of the board while Sunstone Partners remains Stova's lead investor.
Swoogo launched a native Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects event data to AI tools. The server enables three use cases: conversational queries about registrations, session capacity and attendee profiles; AI-assisted building of branded event sites and registration experiences that feed data back into Swoogo; and cross-event analysis that combines Swoogo data with outside sources like a CRM to track which attendees became customers and which events drove revenue.
Wordly released a new tool that produces live AI subtitles and captions for display on any screen at an event, without additional production complexity.
