The Lead Count Data
SaaStr published sponsor lead counts from its May 2026 AI Annual event. Top nine by leads:
- Replit: 1,423 leads
- Lightfield: 1,062
- Aurasell: 1,046
- Salesforce: 1,027
- Rippling: 921
- OpenRouter: 915
- Google for Startups: 817
- Vivun: 793
- Lovable: 605
Artisan separately reported $249k ARR closed on-site and $2M in influenced pipeline from a prior SaaStr event. Aurasell's head of event marketing said they ran the busiest booth on the floor, and their founding SDR posted that one company switched to Aurasell five days after the event.
The mix is useful: not every top performer was a GTM tool. Replit, Lovable, and OpenRouter sell to developers. Rippling sells HR and payroll. The same room delivered 600+ leads to each.
SaaStr says its 2027 event runs May 11-12 in the SF Bay Area. Registration for the 2026 edition was tracking at 142.9% of prior year at the same point. Sponsors for 2026 included Artisan, Google Cloud, Replit, Firebolt, Flatfile, G2, Qualified, People.ai, Salesforce, Vercel, Duplo Cloud, and Pylon.
Five Questions Before You Sign
1. Who controls budget in that room? One CRO with a real tool budget is worth 50 practitioners. If you sell to revenue leaders, 2,000 of them beat a 30,000-person conference full of engineers.
2. How many leads did last year's sponsors get, and from whom? Ask for actual lead counts by sponsor, not a range in a deck. Then ask those sponsors directly.
3. How many sponsors are you competing with? One 2027 guide lists 700+ sponsors for a single AI conference. At that density, only top-tier packages get noticed.
4. Is it a platform event? Dreamforce, Google Cloud Next, and HubSpot's UNBOUND can work, but only if you sell into that platform's installed base.
5. Is the organizer's events business growing or shrinking? A shrinking events P&L usually means a smaller room than the brand implies.
The Attendance Problem
Nearly every attendance figure in every "best events" list comes from the organizer. Nobody audits them.
HumanX is an example. Its own release said 6,500 attended in San Francisco in 2026. A roundup published on the event's final day said 12,000+. Neither was independently counted, and the read from the floor was that it felt far emptier than either number.
Ignore the headline attendance number. Find someone who walked the floor last year and ask them.
Other 2027 Options Worth Checking
Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference (Spring 2027, Las Vegas): Gartner says the 2026 edition drew 1,600+ CSOs and sales executives. That is self-reported, but the audience is tightly defined. Gartner's conferences revenue rose 15.5% year over year in Q2 2026, to $244M. Attendance across its destination conferences was roughly flat, so the growth is coming from pricing and sponsors, not bigger rooms. Expect to pay up.
Google Cloud Next (April 13-15, 2027, Las Vegas): Google cited 32,000+ on-site in 2026. The audience is CIOs, CTOs, cloud architects, data leaders, and developers. Revenue leaders are a small slice. Sponsor only if you are on Google Cloud Marketplace or co-selling with Google's field team. Focus on the Partner Summit on April 12.
Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo (June 7-9, 2027, Denver): Gartner's CMO event. Worth it if enterprise marketing leaders are your exact buyer. More expensive and more analyst-driven than Forrester's B2B Summit.
HumanX (March 7-10, 2027, Las Vegas): The attendance in 2026 did not match the claims, and the organizer is pitching 700+ sponsors for 2027. Proceed carefully.
What This Means
Most B2B event sponsorship decisions get made off organizer decks and self-reported attendance numbers. The useful data is lead counts by sponsor, closed revenue, and who actually showed up. SaaStr published theirs. Ask everyone else to do the same before you sign.