Startup Yale 2026 Finalists Announced
The Startup Yale 2026 finalists are officially set.
After reviewing more than 170 applications, reviewers and prize partners have selected the ventures advancing to pitch live at Startup Yale on April 10.
This year’s finalists reflect the full breadth of innovation happening across Yale and the broader community. From AI saving lives and climate tech cutting emissions to founders rebuilding finance, culture, and civic systems from scratch, these teams are tackling real problems and building ambitious solutions.
Below are the teams moving forward.
Creative Entrepreneurship Prize Finalists
KarinaJ Denim
A women’s denim brand designing slip-on jeans with expandable waistbands that adapt to daily body changes while maintaining a premium look.
Rise Media
A creator intelligence platform helping brands run data-driven short-form influencer campaigns based on real content performance.
Rosetint Community Theatre
A community-rooted musical theatre company building sustainable creative infrastructure in New Haven through bold programming, partnerships, and youth education.
Studio B-Du
A ceramics venture making craft education accessible through design-driven tools, templates, and instructional systems.
Future of Health Innovation Prize Finalists
Akomapa Health Foundation
A student-led global health venture building a scalable model for chronic disease care through university-community partnerships, operating student-run clinics that provide hypertension and diabetes screening, treatment, follow-up, and education in Ghana and the United States.
forEVAhealth
forEVAhealth is developing FERN, a biosensing toothbrush that analyzes saliva to measure key hormones and deliver real-time insights into menstrual cycles, helping women better understand and manage their health through personalized biometric data.
Pulse
A healthcare platform connecting underserved patients with culturally competent providers through identity-aware matching and community-verified reviews.
The MicroClinic Project
A portable diagnostic and telehealth system designed to expand primary care access in rural Bangladesh.
Manolo Sanchez Prize Finalists
C:HET
An investing-first credit card designed to help young adults—a group facing rising housing costs, student debt, and stagnant wage growth—begin building assets early and automatically.
Havn
A digital health platform embedded in EHR systems that connects patients with financial assistance, education, and support programs.
Safari Strives
A Rwanda-based nonprofit creating stable jobs and venture growth through poultry production, a print and tailoring hub, and small business acceleration.
SkySoil
A digital platform using satellite data and sensor fusion to dramatically reduce the cost of verifying soil carbon for smallholder farmers.
Miller Prize Finalists
Cosnetix
A personalized skincare platform that analyzes genetics, microbiome data, and skin traits to predict product compatibility.
Gideon
An AI-powered phone hotline that helps incarcerated individuals navigate grievance systems while providing corrections departments with modern data infrastructure.
Kijani Carbon
A climate venture converting sugarcane waste into biochar for durable carbon removal and affordable organic fertilizer.
PARTEE
A firmware security platform for robotics and physical AI devices, enabling secure containers that protect critical software from system compromise.
New Haven Civic Innovation Prize Finalists
PathConnect
A civic integration platform helping new residents and immigrants in New Haven navigate mentorship, housing, financial literacy, and employment pathways.
PEARL CT
A community-based oral health initiative providing education, screenings, and navigation to affordable dental care for underserved adults.
QuarterMill
An AI platform that transforms historical archives into searchable knowledge graphs, making previously inaccessible records discoverable.
Revenue Cycle
Denial Co-Pilot is an AI-powered system that analyzes insurance denials and predicts the most effective appeal strategies for healthcare providers.
Planetary Solutions Prize Finalists
Apical
A physics-informed machine learning platform that improves solar power forecasting by modeling cloud geometry.
BareFoote Metals
A climate remediation venture stabilizing heavy metals in contaminated soils using engineered basalt to enable safer redevelopment of brownfield sites.
Oilzyme
A shipboard bioremediation system that uses microbes to break down tanker sludge and reduce pollution in global shipping.
Olmsted
An AI-native permitting intelligence platform that helps infrastructure developers manage complex regulatory processes, accelerating the deployment of clean energy projects.
Rothberg Catalyzer Prize Finalists
AllStrum
Assistive devices that allow people with disabilities or limited dexterity to play guitars and ukuleles independently.
Spark
A smartphone-centered computing platform that powers multiple devices — laptop, tablet, or desktop — from a single core compute system.
Vault Kinetics
A preventative health platform using embedded floor sensors to capture movement data and deliver sports science insights without wearables.
Verlet Robotics
Building infrastructure for physical AI, developing proprietary data collection hardware and facilities to accelerate robotics training and deployment.
Yale Innovators Prize Finalists
AssistiveMath
A platform improving accessibility in math education for blind and low vision learners through leveraging assistive technologies and AI, and giving teachers the tools and know-how to foster an inclusive learning environment.
Parallax
A research platform where scientists can publish negative and inconclusive experimental results to prevent duplicated work and accelerate discovery.
Pyari
A gamified mobile platform delivering culturally grounded sexual and reproductive health education to South Asian youth.
SummerStore
A student-run logistics platform providing coordinated moving and storage services designed specifically for college campuses.
What’s Next
These teams will pitch live at Startup Yale 2026 on April 10, where they will present their ventures to judges, investors, and the broader innovation community.
Startup Yale brings together founders, mentors, investors, and builders for a day of pitches, workshops, and conversations about what it takes to turn ideas into impact.
The finalists represent the next generation of founders tackling complex challenges with creativity, technical depth, and a willingness to build in public.
Join us on April 10 to see who takes the stage — and what comes next.
