Over the past two days, 20 startups took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, delivered live demos, and answered tough questions from our panel of expert judges. Now, it’s time to announce the five companies advancing to the Startup Battlefield finals.
This year’s Battlefield spans four categories—Space and Physical AI, Energy and Manufacturing, Health Tech and Life Sciences, and Enterprise and Security—with finalist companies working across diverse areas, from miniature human organs to fraud detection and space computing.
The finals will begin at 11:30 AM Pacific Time tomorrow (Thursday). You can watch live at Disrupt or stream it here. The founders will also pitch to another panel of expert judges, who will select the winner; the winner will receive the Startup Battlefield Cup and a $100,000 prize without equity dilution.
The companies that have advanced to the finals are:
Apate has deployed thousands of AI agents disguised as innocent victims. These agents can answer scam calls, respond to suspicious texts and emails, click on phishing links, and join social media groups to lure scammers. They impersonate people of different ages, genders, and accents, using various languages, to keep scammers engaged long enough to gather useful information.
Flox Intelligence has developed a wildlife deterrent system that operates differently from traditional methods such as alarms, lights, fences, falcons, and culling. Instead, it uses edge devices equipped with perception systems trained on wildlife behavior. Motion sensors activate the devices upon detecting movement, triggering cameras that use on-device models to identify nearby animals. The device then emits species-specific sounds to deter them.
Intero Biosystems is developing human intestinal organoids—laboratory-grown, intestine-like tissues used to study how drugs and other compounds may affect the human body before testing them on people. The company’s organoids differ from simpler models that replicate only parts of the intestinal structure; they contain multiple cell and tissue types found in the human intestine, which the company believes makes them a more physiologically relevant model for testing drugs and other compounds.
Industrial Next builds AI-powered, autonomous robotic workstations supported by proprietary foundation models that integrate vision, task context, and motion. The company says this enables production lines to be reconfigured in minutes rather than weeks, without traditional programming. Its goal is to help manufacturers automate complex, delicate tasks that have traditionally required human labor. In fact, some of the startup’s workstations are already being used to manufacture one of the world’s most popular smartphones.
Satlyt is developing software designed to distribute large computational tasks across multiple satellites in space. The startup has already flight-tested its software in two demonstration missions, initially focusing on improving spacecraft operational efficiency. Such spacecraft typically rely on ground-based operators to diagnose and resolve issues via communication, so using AI to make decisions directly on board could lead to tangible cost savings. The next goal is to demonstrate the ability to create a shared computing cloud between two satellites.