Intero Biosystems Wins Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2026

What happened

San Francisco, October 15 — TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 closed after three days. Twenty startups, chosen from the Startup Battlefield 200, pitched live to VC and tech judges. After hours of deliberation, TechCrunch editors named five finalists — Apate, Flox Intelligence, Intero Biosystems, Industrial Next and Satlyt — who demoed again before the final judging panel. Intero Biosystems took the title.

The final panel comprised Alexa von Tobel of Inspired Capital, Chi-Hua Chien of Goodwater Capital, Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital, Karl Alomar of M13 and Stacy Brown-Philpot of Cherryrock Capital.

Key facts

1. Who won: Intero Biosystems: a Denver startup founded by Charlie Childs and Madeline Eiken, spun out of the University of Michigan; it develops 1mm human intestinal “organoids” — lab-grown tissue mimicking the gut — to study how drugs and compounds affect the human body before human testing.
2. Flagship product: GastroScreen: sold to pharmaceutical, biotech, food and chemical companies for testing drugs and other compounds.
3. Runner-up: Apate: an Australian startup founded by Dali Kaafar, who conceived the idea while researching at Macquarie University in Sydney; it deploys thousands of AI agents masquerading as victims — answering scam calls, replying to shady messages and emails, following phishing links and joining social groups — to bait fraudsters; customers also get an insights portal with scam intelligence targeting their users, employees and brands.
4. Scale: Twenty startups were chosen from the Battlefield 200; the winner's prize is the cup plus $100,000; the competition's alumni exceed 1,700 companies with over $30 billion raised collectively and 200+ exits; Trello, Discord, Cloudflare and Mint were all past winners or finalists.

Background

Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch Disrupt's signature early-stage startup competition. HIMIAO covered this year's runner-up Apate on Oct 15: thousands of AI agents masquerading as victims to fight scammers, with 2.5 million conversations logged, also a Disrupt Battlefield 200 finalist.