And the Startup Battlefield winner at Disrupt 2026 is: Intero Biosystems

Intro Biosystems beat out 199 other Startup Battlefield companies to take home the $100,000 grand prize at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

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For three days this week in San Francisco, 20 aspiring startups participated in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The top 20 startups were selected to represent the best of the Startup Battlefield 200, and they competed for a chance to win the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. Completing that intense game, we have a winner.

These startups were selected to compete in the Startup Battlefield, where they all presented a live demo in front of VCs and tech leaders who judged the competition.

After hours of deliberation, TechCrunch editors reviewed the judges' notes and whittled the list down to five finalists: Apate, Flox Intelligence, Intero Biosystems, Industrial Next and Satlyt.

Five finalists advanced to the finals to pitch in front of our final panel of judges: 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.

We are now ready to announce the winners of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026:

Intero Biosystems is a Denver-based startup founded by Charlie Childs and Madeleine Aiken and spun out of the University of Michigan. It is developing 1-millimeter human intestinal "organoids," lab-grown tissue that mimics the intestine. Another way to study how drugs and other compounds affect the human body before testing them on people. The startup sells its flagship product, GastroScreen, to pharmaceutical, biotech, food and chemical companies for testing drugs and other compounds.

Apate is an Australian startup founded by Dolly Kafer, who came up with the idea while doing research at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It deploys thousands of AI agents that pose as innocent victims, answer scam calls, respond to secret messages and emails, follow phishing links, and join social media groups to prey on scammers. In addition to access to Apate's fleet of agents, customers receive an Insights Portal that provides information and analytics on fraud targeting end users or employees, brands, products and more.

The two companies now join Startup Battlefield winners and finalists such as Trello, Discord, Cloudflare and Mint on the Disrupt Stage. With more than 1,700 alumni in the program, Startup Battlefield alumni have collectively raised more than $30 billion in funding with more than 200 successful exits.

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