Meet the five companies competing in the Startup Battlefield finale at Disrupt 2026
The time has come to unveil the five companies that will compete in the Startup Battlefield finale.
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Over the past two days, 20 startups have taken the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, giving live demos and answering tough questions from our expert judges. Now it's time to introduce the five companies that will compete in the Startup Battlefield finals.
This year's battleground included four categories — space and physical AI, energy and manufacturing, health technology and life sciences, and enterprise and security — and our finalists work on everything from miniature human organs to combating fraud and computing in space.
The finals start tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:30am Pacific - you can watch them on stage at Disrupt or live here. Founders will be presented to another panel of expert judges who will select the winner. That winner gets to take home the Battlefield Startup Trophy and $100,000 with no equity.
Apat deploys thousands of AI agents that pose as innocent victims. These agents can answer scam calls, respond to suspicious messages and emails, follow phishing links, and join social media groups to prey on scammers. They pretend to be all kinds of people, of different ages, genders, accents, and speak different languages, trying to keep scammers engaged enough to learn something useful.
Flox Intelligence is a system-built wildlife deterrent that works differently than the sirens, lights, fences, hawks and carnage traditionally used to keep animals away. Instead, it uses edge devices with perception systems trained on wildlife behavior. A motion sensor wakes the device when it detects it and activates a camera that uses models on the device to detect nearby animals. The device then emits a sound appropriate to the species to scare them.
Entero Biosystems is developing human intestinal organoids — lab-grown tissue that mimics the gut — as another way to study how drugs and other compounds might work on the human body before testing them on people. Its organoids differ from simpler models that replicate only a portion of the intestine. They contain many types of cells and tissues found in the human gut, which the company believes makes them a relevant human model for testing drugs and other compounds.
Industrial Next builds autonomous AI-based robotic stations powered by proprietary base models that connect vision, context, and motion. The company says it enables a production line to be retooled in minutes instead of weeks without traditional programming. The goal is to allow manufacturers to automate complex and delicate tasks that traditionally require human labor. In fact, some of the startup's workstations are currently being used to build one of the world's most popular smartphones.
Satlyt is building software that will allow many satellites to share large computing tasks in space. The startup has already flown its software on two demonstration missions with an initial focus on finding operational efficiencies for spacecraft. These spacecraft typically depend on flight controllers on the ground to resolve any communication issues that arise, so using AI to make spacecraft decisions can mean real savings. The next goal: to demonstrate that it can create a shared cloud computing between two satellites.
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Anthony is the weekend editor for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a technology reporter at Adweek, senior editor at VentureBeat, local government reporter at Hollister Free Lance, and VP of content at a VC firm. He lives in New York City.
You can contact or confirm Anthony by emailing him at [email protected].
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