After two days full of live demos and pitches, it’s time to announce the five finalists at this year’s Startup Battlefield.
These finalists were selected from an initial pool of thousands of applicants, with News’s editorial team narrowing the field down to the 200 companies that all joined us here at Disrupt, with the Top 20 competing on the Disrupt Stage.
With feedback from our expert judges, we’ve now selected our finalists, who will take the stage one more time at 11:30 a.m. PT on Wednesday to compete for our grand prize of $100,000 in equity-free funding, as well as temporary custody of the Startup Battlefield Cup. You can watch the finals on the livestream on the News website — or, if you’re attending the conference, on the Disrupt Stage.
Without further ado, here are the News Startup Battlefield finalists for 2025:
Charter Space
Charter Space has built a dev tool for aerospace engineers, but its real mission is to serve as a fintech company for space. The software captures manufacturing and test data directly from the source, and this dataset then feeds an underwriting interface that ties directly in with the largest insurance carriers in the market. The goal is faster, cheaper, and more reliable risk evaluation for spacecraft insurance, and eventually to power new forms of credit and nondilutive funding for space companies looking outside venture capital and the public markets.
Glīd
Glīd (pronounced “Glide”) aims to streamline the complex, multistep process involved in moving a container from a ship to a freight train. The company has developed several hardware and software products to speed up and reduce the cost of getting shipping containers to the railhead and eventually their destination. Its first product is GliderM, a hybrid-electric vehicle with a hook on the back that can pick up and move 20-foot containers directly to the rail without the need for forklifts of hostler trucks.
MacroCycle
MacroCycle has developed a shortcut, of sorts, that promises to make recycled plastic as inexpensive as virgin material. The startup has devised a way to pluck desirable synthetic fibers from waste textiles, leaving everything else behind. Unlike most chemical recycling, MacroCycle’s process differs because it doesn’t break down polymers. Instead, it loops the polymer chains back on themselves, forcing them into rings called macrocycles, which remain behind after contaminants are washed away.
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Nephrogen
Nephrogen is a biotech startup that uses AI and advanced screening to develop a specialized delivery system for safely getting gene-editing medicines into the exact cells in the kidney. Founder Demetri Maxim says that after three years of development, Nephrogen has succeeded in creating a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more efficient at transporting medicine to the kidney than the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA. And he plans to participate in the clinical study himself, given the challenges he faces living with polycystic kidney disease.
Unlisted Homes
Unlisted Homes is like Zillow but for houses that are not yet on the market. Using public records of 21 million homes, Unlisted created “profiles” for each property, providing the same kind of information that you would find on any other real estate listings site. The company doesn’t plan to facilitate real estate transactions through the platform, since the resources for those transactions already exist. Instead, Unlisted will sell sponsorships on individual ZIP codes to real estate agents, who will be listed as local experts on every home in that ZIP code.
