Twenty Startups Compete for $100,000 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

Twenty founders will compete for a $100,000 prize and the Disrupt Cup at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, with the winner crowned on Thursday, October 15.

TechCrunch selected the Top 20 from thousands of applications worldwide. The cohort spans space launch, fusion materials, miniature organs, and scam-busting chatbots. One theme runs through the batch, according to TechCrunch: "Making the previously invisible measurable."

The companies measure biological clocks, grow tiny human organs, teach robots physical tasks, and extract intelligence from scam calls. One finalist, Longshot Space, plans to launch cargo with a giant hydrogen-powered cannon. As TechCrunch put it: "Subtle, this group is not."

What does the competition look like?

Each company gets six minutes on the Disrupt Stage. Semifinals run across four sessions on October 13 and 14. Five companies advance to the finals on October 15 at 11:30 a.m. The champion takes the stage at 4:15 p.m.

TechCrunch framed the cohort's shared thread as an ambition "to understand more of the world around us — biological, physical, industrial, and digital."

Who is pitching on Tuesday, October 13?

Session 1 covers space and physical AI (10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.):

• Longshot Space — launching cargo to orbit at $50/kg using hydrogen-powered kinetic launchers
• Veritas — custom microchips that verify luxury goods' authenticity
• Laplace Intelligence — agentic world models that let cities, ports and airports test counterfactual futures before acting
• Flox Intelligence — real-time AI that detects animal behavior to prevent wildlife collisions at airports and railways
• Satlyt — turning idle spacecraft compute into virtual AI data centers with one line of code

Session 2 covers energy and manufacturing (1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.):

• LNK Energies — compact reactors that deliver clean hydrogen power cheaper than diesel
• Helix Carbon — electrochemical upcycling of blast furnace waste gas into replacement fossil fuels on-site
• IndustrialNext — AI-driven robots that learn from production data for contact-rich assembly
• Niobia AI — domain-expert AI that compresses weeks of root-cause analysis into minutes
• Licube — ultra-high purity lithium and Li-6/Li-7 isotopes for nuclear fusion and advanced materials

Who is pitching on Wednesday, October 14?

Session 3 covers health tech and life sciences (10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.):

• Mosqitter — sensor networks that turn into early warning systems for mosquito-borne disease
• Hiyd AI — an ultra-slim wearable combining sleep, movement and nutrition data
• TimeTeller GmbH — molecular diagnostics that measure biological clocks to time treatments
• NTangible — a validated cognitive score for how athletes perform under pressure
• Intero Biosystems — miniature human organs that cut clinical trial costs for pharma

Session 4 covers enterprise and security (1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.):

• Apate.ai — conversational AI bots that engage scammers and feed real-time intelligence to banks, telcos and governments
• CedarDB — one database engine for real-time transactions and analytics, with guardrails AI agents cannot bypass
• Prismm — automated, secure inheritance workflows that help banks retain deposits across generations
• Floqer — customer data enrichment across 80+ sources, stitched into a millisecond-retrievable timeline for AI agents
• GUDEA — analytics on audience behavior and how information spreads

What happens at the finals?

Before the finalists take the stage, three alumni — Glīd, Nephrogen and Molecule.one — return for updates on their progress since competing. Then one of the five finalists wins the $100,000 equity-free prize, if precedent holds, and the Disrupt Cup.

Startup Battlefield is supported by Google for Startups and SAP. TechCrunch is selling last-minute Disrupt tickets at 50% off for viewers who want to watch live. For the finalists, six minutes on stage now stand between them and the field's most visible early-stage trophy.