This week in San Francisco, 20 highly anticipated startups competed in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The 20 finalists, selected from the Startup Battlefield 200, vied for the Startup Battlefield Cup and a $100,000 prize. After an intense round of pitches, the champion has been crowned.
These startups were carefully selected to participate in Startup Battlefield and presented live in front of judges, including venture capitalists and technology industry leaders.
After hours of discussion, the TechCrunch editors reviewed the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to five finalist companies: Apate, Flox Intelligence, Intero Biosystems, Industrial Next, and Satlyt.
These five companies then advanced to the finals, where they presented before the final panel, which included Alexa von Tobel of Inspired Capital, Chi-Hua Chien of Goodwater Capital, Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital, Karl Alomar of M13, and Stacy Brown-Philpot of Cherryrock Capital.
TechCrunch is now announcing that the winner of the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026 is:
Champion: Intero Biosystems
Intero Biosystems is a Denver-based startup founded by Charlie Childs and Madeline Eiken, spun out from the University of Michigan. The company is developing 1-millimeter human intestinal “organoids”—laboratory-grown tissues designed to mimic the intestine, offering an alternative method for studying how drugs and other compounds affect the human body before human trials. The startup sells its flagship product, GastroScreen, to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, food, and chemical companies for testing drugs and other compounds.
For more information about Intero Biosystems, see our separate article.
Second place: Apate
Apate is an Australian startup founded by Dali Kaafar, who conceived the idea while conducting research at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. The company deploys thousands of AI agents that impersonate unsuspecting victims to answer scam calls, respond to suspicious messages and emails, click on phishing links, and join social media groups to lure scammers. In addition to accessing Apate’s network of agents, customers receive an insights portal that provides intelligence and analysis on scams targeting their end users or employees, brands, products, and more.
For more information about Apate, see our separate article.
These two companies have now joined the ranks of past winners and finalists of Startup Battlefield, including Trello, Discord, Cloudflare, and Mint. The program has welcomed over 1,700 alumni companies, which together have raised more than $30 billion in funding and achieved more than 200 successful exits.