Over the past two days, 20 startups have been pitching onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, presenting live demos and answering tough questions from our expert judges. Now it's time to unveil the five companies that will be competing in the Startup Battlefield finals. This year's Battlefield spanned four categories ' space and physical AI, energy and manufacturing, health tech and life sciences, and enterprise and security ' and our finalists are working on everything from miniature human organs to fighting scams to computing in space. The finals will kick off tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:30 a.m. Pacific ' you can watch them onstage at Disrupt or on the livestream here. The founders will be presenting for another panel of expert judges who will pick the winner; that winner gets to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000, equity-free. Apate deploys thousands of AI agents that masquerade as innocent victims. The agents can answer scam calls, respond to shady messages and...
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