OPEN Silicon Valley will host OPEN Forum 2026 on Saturday, November 7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, bringing together founders, executives, investors, writers and artists for a full day under the theme Build. Bridge. Belong. The forum, which marks 25 years of the community, runs from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. OPEN Silicon Valley is the Silicon Valley chapter of the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs, and the organizers describe the event as open to everyone, inviting attendees to bring their children, colleagues and anyone who has never been to a gathering like it.
The speaker lineup is wide. Mehdi Hasan, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Zeteo, closes the main program, and Misbah and Farah Uraizee, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Nectar, discuss building in the artificial intelligence era. Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President at Oracle, and Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow, speak on two careers built side by side. Wajahat Ali, author and opinion writer for The New York Times, joins Tehmina Jaffer, Executive Vice President of Business Affairs at Disney Kids and Family, for a session titled A Seat at the Table. Actor Saagar Shaikh of Ms. Marvel and Deli Boys, chef Zareen Khan of Zareen’s, and Samina Bari, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Farewell, also take the stage.
Pakistan’s own startup community has a place on the program. Haroon Yasin, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Taleemabad, appears alongside Sania Salman, Senior Investment Principal at the Mulago Foundation, and Nadir Shams, Co-founder of The Friends of Pakistan, in a session on bridging profits and purpose. The forum also offers five hands-on workshops, known as toolkit sessions, which cover leading with values, prototyping a next move, making income work harder, sustaining high performance and finding different routes to success. The day ends at 5:00 PM with a musical performance by Nishant Bordia.
Beyond the stage, the organizers have planned a full day of activities, including Rivian test drives, a pop-up marketplace of local makers, a trivia challenge covering 25 years of OPEN, giveaways, a shared lunch and live music. Registration closes on November 5, with tickets priced at 75 dollars and 25 dollars for students, and attendees can register for the forum here. The organizers say OPEN began 25 years ago so that newcomers would not have to figure out the valley alone, and they note that the idea has not changed while the group of people it includes keeps growing. For Pakistani founders and professionals with ties to Silicon Valley, the forum offers a chance to meet leaders across technology, media, philanthropy and the arts in a single day.
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