Every year, News’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition.
Here is the full list of the consumer/edtech Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition.
Ahoi
What it does: Helps people find places that are accessible to those with limited mobility.
Why it’s noteworthy: Its inclusive technology makes places more accessible to those who might otherwise struggle to find locations to service their needs.
AllFocal Optics Limited
What it does: Uses nanophotonic technology to create lenses that enhance visual clarity.
Why it’s noteworthy: The company says that it has created breakthrough technology that helps people, especially those with conditions like headaches and dizziness, to withstand prolonged extended reality experiences.
Billight
What it does: Billight is a light-up pool table.
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Why it’s noteworthy: It calls itself the first light-up pool table and gaming system.
Cerca Dating
What it does: This Gen Z dating app is bringing back the way people used to meet — via mutual friends.
Why it’s noteworthy: It’s the latest spin on a dating app during this time of romance app fatigue, trying to prove that digital love is still alive.
FounderWay.ai
What it does: A platform that helps startups scale by providing business advice on topics like how to build a pitch deck or finding a target market.
Why it’s noteworthy: The platform is using AI to offer insight into some of the most pressing questions founders always have — how to run and scale a business. It’s an easier solution than trying to source information from various places by oneself.
Hotel Treats
What it does: A platform where luxury hotels can give customers vouchers for services like spas and dining.
Why it’s noteworthy: The platform lets hotels monetize day passes while also giving consumers a way to treat themselves to a singular luxury experience, without having to spend the big bucks and stay at the hotel.
Jotto
What it does: A company that creates QR codes for events and establishments so people can leave feedback and reviews.
Why it’s noteworthy: It’s an interesting product that also lets people give feedback by video or voice.
Nim
What it does: A platform that lets users create AI videos.
Why it’s noteworthy: It’s part of the wave of AI video companies launching, but it offers an all-in-one service, offering prompt assistance and numerous reusable clips.
Perfingo
What it does: Perfingo is a financial planning tool.
Why it’s noteworthy: It hails itself as the first of its kind in its home base of Singapore.
Pintours
What it does: Pintours is a tour-booking platform.
Why it’s noteworthy: It’s an AI tour guide, letting consumers guide themselves through a tour and personalize the experience to ways they see fit.
Prickly Pear Health
What it does: Prickly Pear provides a voice AI companion for women that monitors brain health.
Why it’s noteworthy: This isn’t a chatbot, but an AI is trained to decipher changes in language and context that could indicate cognitive issues, especially those arising from hormonal changes that women in their 30s to 50s experience.
rax
What it does: Rax is a peer-to-peer clothing rental platform.
Why it’s noteworthy: The winner of the top consumer pitch, Rax says it is one of the first to launch in Canada and just announced an expansion to the U.S.
Rent a Cyber Friend
What it does: Helps people find friends within their professions over the internet.
Why it’s noteworthy: Unlike a social network, this app helps people identify potential friends and includes options like video calls and chats to help friendships sprout.
Renude
What it does: Renude offers an AI-powered skin care recommendation engine for beauty brands.
Why it’s noteworthy: Using computer vision AI and LLMs, this e-commerce tool allows skin care brands to offer personalized product recommendations to every customer.
Snap Discovery AG
What it does: Offers a brain-computer interface intended to be used for hands-free everyday interaction.
Why it’s noteworthy: Snap interacts with game development platform Unity and is intended for a range of uses, from games to stress management.
Tasteit
What it does: Tasteit is an app that helps people meet to dine together.
Why it’s noteworthy: Tasteit calls itself the anti-dating app, as its mission is to use food and dining out as a way for people to match and meet.
Tattd
What it does: Tattd is an AI-powered app that helps people find and book tattoo artists.
Why it’s noteworthy: The startup uses generative AI to create a mock-up of a design and then matches that to a tattoo artist whose work aligns with the mock-up.
Vista InnoTech Limited
What it does: Vista InnoTech has invented tech that creates better photos by eliminating the effects of accidental shaking or shaking environments.
Why it’s noteworthy: It has created a tech called Micro Gimbal Stabilizer, small enough to be embedded in most mobile devices, that works well even in low-light conditions.
Young Minds App
What it does: A parental control app that watches over and prevents kids from engaging in unsafe online behavior.
Why it’s noteworthy: The app rewards kids’ smart online choices and offers a distraction-blocking feature for study time.
ZoraSafe
What it does: ZoraSafe identifies and protects consumers against scams.
Why it’s noteworthy: Aimed at families and seniors, ZoraSafe scans links and messages to prevent scams, including through deepfakes and social engineering. It also offers features like AI coaching.
Edtech
Calificadas
What it does: AI-powered training to improve an employee’s workplace communications.
Why it’s noteworthy: This professional development app was designed with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind and uses AI to help people level up their word choices, message structure, and even their nonverbal language.
CampusAI
What it does: CampusAI offers a flexible platform to train people on AI.
Why it’s noteworthy: The platform is geared to help everyday people who want to use AI to improve their work, be it in sales, HR, legal, or other areas.
General Neuro
What it does: The NeuroLingo headset helps people learn a foreign language.
Why it’s noteworthy: This headset creates conditions that assist with language learning along with a synchronized app.
Readmio
What it does: A story-time app for parents and kids.
Why it’s noteworthy: The app follows along with the words as they are being read aloud, automatically adding sounds and music at certain text sections, making stories more interactive.
Super Teacher
What it does: Super Teacher offers an AI-powered tutor for elementary schools.
Why it’s noteworthy: This AI tutor offers individualized instructions and assessments for use in classrooms, with 24/7 access for students at home.
ZEZEDU Corp.
What it does: Zezedu is an AI-powered platform, developed in South Korea, that offers personalized math learning.
Why it’s noteworthy: A math teaching tool for schools and academies that tracks assignments, grading, and feedback with personalized curriculum.
