After two days full of live demos and presentations, it is time to announce the five finalists for this 12 months’s Startup Battlefield.
The finalists were chosen from an initial pool of 1000’s of applicants, and the TechCrunch editorial team narrowed the field to the 200 corporations that joined us at Disrupt, with the top 20 competing on the Disrupt Stage.
Thanks to feedback from our experts, we have chosen finalists who will take the stage again on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. PT to compete for our grand prize of $100,000 in no-equity funding, in addition to interim stewardship of the Startup Battlefield Cup. You can watch the finals live on TechCrunch — or, if you are attending the conference, on the Disrupt Stage.
Without further ado, here are the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield finalists for 2025:
Charter space
Charter Space has created a software tool for aerospace engineers, but its real mission is to function a space fintech company. The software pulls production and test data directly from the source, and this data set then powers an insurance interface that connects on to the largest insurers in the market. The goal is to make risk assessment for spacecraft insurance faster, cheaper and more reliable, and ultimately provide recent forms of credit and non-dilutive financing for space corporations looking beyond enterprise capital and public markets.
smooth
The goal of Glīd (pronounced “Glide”) is to streamline the complex, multi-step process of moving a container from ship to freight train. The company has developed several hardware and software products to hurry up and reduce the cost of transporting containers to the railhead and ultimately to their destination. Its first product is the GliderM, a hybrid-electric vehicle with a hook on the back that may lift and carry 20-foot containers directly onto rail without the need for forklifts or hostler trucks.
Macrocycle
MacroCycle has developed a shortcut of sorts that guarantees to make recycled plastic as inexpensive as virgin material. The startup has come up with a solution to extract desirable synthetic fibers from textile waste, leaving every part else behind. Unlike most chemical recycling, the MacroCycle process is different in that it does not break down polymers. Instead, it loops the polymer chains back into rings called macrocycles that remain after the contaminants are washed away.
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Nephrogen
Nephrogen is a biotechnology startup that uses artificial intelligence and advanced screening to develop a specialized delivery system to soundly deliver gene-modifying drugs precisely to cells in the kidney. Founder Demetri Maxim says that after three years of development, Nephrogen has created a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more practical at transporting the drug to the kidney than “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA. He plans to participate in a clinical trial himself, given the challenges he faces living with polycystic kidney disease.
Unlisted houses
Unlisted Homes is just like Zillow, but for homes that are not yet on the market. Using public records of 21 million homes, Unlisted created “profiles” for each property, providing the same type of information you’d find on any other real estate listing site. The company does not plan to facilitate real estate transactions through the platform as resources for such transactions exist already. Instead, Unlisted will sell sponsorships in individual ZIP codes to real estate agents who can be listed as local experts on each home in that ZIP code.