And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2025 is: Glīd
For three days this week, 20 startups participated in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. Each was selected to represent the best of the Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. After all that intense pitching, we have a winner.
These startups were handpicked to compete in Startup Battlefield, and all of them presented a live demo in front of the VCs and tech leaders who judged the competition.
After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to five finalists: Charter Space, Glīd, MacroCycle, Nephrogen, and Unlisted Homes.
The final five made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included Aileen Lee, founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, and Digg founder Kevin Rose.
We’re now ready to announce that the winner of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2024 is:
Winner: Glīd
Glīd (pronounced “Glide”) aims to streamline the complex, multistep process involved in moving a container from a ship to a freight train. The company, founded by Kevin Damoa (pictured), has developed several hardware and software products to speed up and reduce the cost of getting shipping containers to the railhead and eventually their destination. Its first product is GliderM, a hybrid-electric vehicle with a hook on the back that can pick up and move 20-foot containers directly to the rail without the need for forklifts of hostler trucks.
Read more about Glīd in our separate post.
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Runner-up: Nephrogen
Nephrogen is a biotech startup that uses AI and advanced screening to develop a specialized delivery system for safely getting gene-editing medicines into the exact cells in the kidney. Founder Demetri Maxim says that after three years of development, Nephrogen has succeeded in creating a delivery mechanism that is 100 times more efficient at transporting medicine to the kidney than the “vehicles” currently approved by the FDA. And he plans to participate in the clinical study himself, given the challenges he faces living with polycystic kidney disease.
Read more about Nephrogen in our separate post.
These two companies follow in the footsteps of Startup Battlefield legends like Dropbox, Discord, Cloudflare, and Mint on the Disrupt Stage. With more than 1,500 alumni having participated in the program, Startup Battlefield Alumni have collectively raised over $29 billion in funding with more than 200 successful exits.
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
