The Founders Factory Venture Studio is building a new generation of healthcare companies in partnership with one of the world's leading industrial healthcare groups. We're looking for founders to build with us. Ageing populations, rising rates of chronic disease, workforce shortages and mounting cost pressures are all accelerating the shift towards care delivered beyond traditional clinical settings. Remote health monitoring sits at the centre of that transition. The clinical end of this market alone is expected to grow from ~$30bn today to more than $200bn by 2035. But collecting data is only part of the challenge. The companies that will define this space won't just generate insights; they'll be integrated into care pathways, helping clinicians and caregivers make better decisions and intervene earlier. We've spent months exploring where the largest value pools sit, what is technically possible versus what meaningfully influences clinical outcomes, and where the toughest problems remain unsolved. We're now building and backing founders working in: → Clinical remote patient monitoring → Hospital at home → Elder care tech → At-home diagnostics → Remote monitoring infrastructure If you're building in one of these areas, or thinking about it, we want to hear from you. Learn more and apply to build with us below.   foundersfactory.com/request-… #healthtech #medtech #venturebuilding

Congratulations to Valarian and Uncovr on featuring in the Sifted AI 100 2026. Recognised for the size of the opportunity they’re chasing, the defensibility of their tech and the speed at which they’re moving. ➡️ Valarian builds sovereign AI and high-consequence infrastructure for government, defence, and enterprise organisations ➡️ Uncovr builds video-understanding foundation models that analyse live surgical videos in real-time. Real recognition for serious momentum. Read the full report on Sifted: sifted.eu/intelligence/repor… #AI #Startups #SiftedAI100

Opportunity lies for technology that leans into interdependence with nature rather than builds around it. If a port uses concrete infrastructure, why shouldn’t that concrete provide a home for marine life which in turn benefits fishing and farming communities? This is what we term ‘nature tech’, pioneering startups building at the intersection of venture and nature. With mentions for nature tech portfolio; Ocean Hex, North Australian SeaCulture, SnailCam and Tidal Moon, and for partners Rio Tinto and The Government of Western Australia, our latest piece looks at the reciprocal benefits of natural and industrial ecosystems. Read the piece here: foundersfactory.com/articles… #Nature #Infrastructure #CriticalInfrastructure #Startups #NatureTech

Founders Factory and ExpresSo NB, the innovation arm of PTT, Thailand’s national energy company, have partnered on a venture studio to build a new portfolio of clean energy startups out of Bangkok. We’re building the first two ventures and we’re looking for the founders to lead them. 🌱 1. Project Amber: Turn Thailand's burned rice straw into verified carbon removal Every dry season, Thailand burns around 4.8 million tonnes of rice straw in its fields. It’s the fastest, cheapest way for farmers to clear land and it’s a major driver of the haze over Bangkok. At the same time, the world’s biggest buyers of carbon removal are short on supply. Biochar is the dominant source of durable removal, most industrial capacity is already contracted, and buyers want new origins they can trust. Amber is a logistics and verification platform that moves crop residue from the field edge to biochar producers, and owns the chain of custody that turns thousands of smallholder farms into premium carbon credits. Satellite mapping finds the straw before harvest. A field app handles booking, weighing, routing and farmer payment, and produces the audit-grade record buyers need. We’re looking for a Founder & CEO who has moved real tonnes through rural Thailand, whether in rice, cane, cassava or biomass, and can sell what comes out the other end. Fluent Thai, strong English, and the respect of people in the field as well as the boardroom. The selected founder pitches to ExpresSo NB in early December. Apply on Ashyby: jobs.ashbyhq.com/founders-fa… ☀️2. FaiSabai: the operating system for residential solar Thailand is about to have a rooftop solar boom. The government’s new household grant and soft loans are aimed at up to a million homes. But homeowners are making a major technical decision blind, systems are often sized wrong, and nobody is accountable for whether the promised saving shows up. FaiSabai solves everything around the panel. A homeowner sends their electricity bill on LINE, and FaiSabai sizes the right system, adds a battery where it’s needed, and bundles grant, loan and an accredited installer into one contract. A home monitoring device then verifies the saving, and over time, a fleet of connected homes can become a virtual power plant with ExpresSo NB. We’re looking for a Tech Co-Founder / CTO to join FaiSabai’s commercial co-founder and own the product, platform, monitoring and data. You’ve shipped a product end to end, you know connected energy or IoT, and you understand how Thai households buy solar. Apply on Ashby: jobs.ashbyhq.com/founders-fa… #FounderRoles #Startups #VentureStudio #EnergyStartups #Thailand #Bangkok

🌊 Applications are now open for the Blue Action Accelerator. We’re looking for pre-seed and seed stage startups building technologies that positively impact the preservation of oceans and marine environments. Blue Action Accelerator brings together entrepreneurs, policymakers and investors to fund and accelerate the future of the blue economy. It’s a collaboration between Founders Factory and Blue Action, a Bahamas-based ocean innovation hub, now also running in Vancouver, Canada in partnership with COAST. Selected startups receive: 💰 $150K cash investment, plus access to follow-on capital through our global investor networks 🛠️ A 4-month, expert-led, cohort-based program across product development, operations, commercialisation, data science, partnerships and fundraising 🏝️ Unique access to real-world testing grounds and regional government relations, underpinned by our special relationship with the Grand Bahama Port Authority 🌍 An ecosystem of policymakers, researchers, investors and climate innovators 📘 Founders Factory’s venture-building playbooks and resources to de-risk your startup 🎁 Hand-picked deals and perks worth $250,000 We’re investing across coastal carbon capture, natural disasters, island infrastructure, offshore and ocean energy, ocean data centres, maritime sustainability, and horizontal/enabling technologies. Our portfolio includes ACUA Ocean, DRIFT Energy, Brineworks, Ocean Ledger and Clippership, and NetworkOcean and companies from the programme have raised $45M in follow-on funding in the last 18 months. If you’re building technology to preserve our oceans and marine environments, we want to hear from you. 👉 Apply now: form.typeform.com/to/XdvluIs… #OceanTech #BlueEconomy #ClimateTech #Accelerator #StartupFunding

What if the material you discarded during extraction, processing, farming, or production became your second product line? This is the question many startups in industrial and nature tech are exploring across mining, farming and chemicals. None more so than Alison Duguid, Founder and CEO of North Australian SeaCulture. The seaweed industry has spent decades trying to get the most gel extract from every tonne of raw material. Whatever is left over is discarded as waste. Alison saw that leftover biomass as a second business. By redesigning the extraction process itself with no chemical additives and low energy use, her team turns it into a soil health product aimed at problems like mine site rehabilitation. The soil product and the gel extract now fund each other. As an engineer, Alison also found that the processing design was the easy part. The hard part was the biology, which follows no equation, behaving on its own terms -- something she is planning around for an uncertain future. North Australian SeaCulture has come through our NatureTech accelerator with the Government of Western Australia and Alison has recently won the Croc Pitch 2026 as well as featuring on national television for her work. Read the full piece here: foundersfactory.com/articles… #NatureTech #Seaweed #Founders

Q3 saw European healthtech go transatlantic, an extension of one of the UK’s longest venture building partnerships and $350M raised across the Founders Factory portfolio. Take a look through some of the milestones from last quarter: Updates from FF HQ 🏢 🔹 Extended the Founders Factory and Aviva Partnership, one of the UK’s longest venture building programmes for another 3 years, building 3 new studio ventures per year 🔹 Announced the first cohort of the Northwestern Medicine and Founders Factory Healthcare Accelerator, featured in Axios 🔹Announced the 5th Nature Tech cohort, supporting critical natural ecosystems and infrastructure in harmony. 🔹Hostedk the Northwestern Medicine cohort in Chicago for residency week: 20+ clinical meetings across four days and a showcase at MATTER for 60+ investors, health systems and NM leadership 🔹 Kicked off the Future Industries Partnership Commercialisation Bootcamp with HSBC and Third Derivative, a six-week intensive for 18 industrial climate startups 🔹 Spun out Immoly from the venture studio with Vonovia, Europe's largest residential real estate company, building an AI-native property manager for Germany's landlords 🔹 Invested in finQbit with Mediobanca, a quantum computing platform delivering 10–300x faster financial risk calculations 🔹 Backed Mama Insurance, Italy's first AI-native insurance platform, in a round led by Fastweb + Vodafone 🔹 Opened three studio co-founder roles, each with €275k in capital: IndustrialShield (UK/Australia), Slidestream (India) and NightWatch (US) 🔹 Hosted our Berlin Healthcare Mixer bringing together founders, investors and team for a night of relaxed drinks and conversation 🔹 Attended New York Climate Week, including sessions on the ocean’s role in American re-industrialisation and critical minerals, startup showcases, and a ride on Vessev’s hydrofoil on the East River with the Rypples team. 🔹 Released new features on the copper shortfall, the $3 trillion in red mud, medium-temperature geothermal, nature tech for critical industry, and winning customers and investors in heavy industry Highlights from the global portfolio 🌍 🌍 Scan.com closed $220M in equity and debt after doubling revenue to a $165M+ run rate 🌍 Xapien raised a $56M Series B led by Spectrum Equity to make dynamic due diligence the global standard 🌍 Valarian closed an oversubscribed $50M Series A led by NEA, taking total funding to $70M 🌍 Bondio raised $7.5M led by Breega to build the core infrastructure for the eSIM world 🌍 Ki 13 raised a $5M seed to build the world's largest pilot plant for biomass electrolysis 🌍 FAST Metals raised a $4.3M pre-seed and signed its first commercial customer to recover critical minerals from red mud 🌍 Furbnow raised a $3.3M seed to make home energy retrofit navigable for homeowners 🌍 Chiron raised a $1.2M seed to scale personalised self-management across the NHS 🌍 Hades secured an exploration licence for Storkwitz, Germany's only known rare earth deposit 🌍 NetworkOcean became the first company to run a customer AI workload at sea on solar power, 53 days from design to deployment 🌍 Aviva expanded its partnership with Tembo, bringing mortgage support into its workplace pension offer 🌍 ACUA signed an MoU with Babcock and Frankenburg Technologies on maritime counter-drone capability 🌍 North Australian SeaCulture won Croc Pitch 2026, Northern Australia's premier pitching competition 🌍 Nucleo took 1st place in Medical Imaging at the Nebius AI Discovery Awards, and Ocean Hex was named a finalist for WA Innovators of the Year 🌍 Emerald Nuclear signed Island Offshore as its first commercial customer for Arctic shipping microreactors #Q3Highlights #VentureBuilding

Introducing the fifth cohort of the Founders Factory & Rio Tinto Mining Tech Accelerator. A new mining industry is emerging where critical materials are discovered, produced and processed using frontier technologies beyond the mine site such as AI, quantum computing and deep science. From over 500 applications, we're thrilled to welcome five exceptional ventures into the programme, taking our global mining portfolio to 29 startups: ⛏️ Cascade Geomatics (US): Geohazard monitoring for resources industries and infrastructure | Founders: Braden Kislin | Nafizur Rahman | cascadegeomatics.com 🧬 Fieldstone (US): Harnessing biology for rapid metal measurements | Founders: Patrick Stone | Brandon Fields | fieldstone.bio ⚗️ Determinant Materials (US): Rapid, microparticle refining of critical metals at the point of origin | Founders: Nikhil R. Gupta | determinantmaterials.com 📊 blueprint powered by Imvelo (Australia): The economic decision platform for mining | Founders: Alan Bye | Sharna Glover | blueprintmining.ai 🔍 NanduX (US & Chile): Copper exploration with deep sensing | Founders: Miguel Arratia | Sebastian Tapia | nandux.net As critical minerals and raw materials become increasingly central to global resilience, AI advancement and electrification, our portfolio continues to deliver real commercial results. Two thirds of our startups have trialled, are currently trialling, or under contract with Rio Tinto across its global operations. Welcome to the programme Rio Tinto Mining Tech Cohort 5. #MiningTech #NewMining #Innovation #CriticalMinerals #VentureBuilding #DeepTech

🌏 Meet the latest cohort of startups joining the WA Nature Tech Accelerator with the The Government of Western Australia. This new wave of nature tech innovators are applying biotechnology, AI, robotics and nature-based solutions to some of WA's most significant environmental challenges, from critical mineral recovery and mining emissions to water security, coral aquaculture and marine restoration: ➡️ Byssal (Perth, Australia): applying proven aquafarming practices to build resilience and restore long-term ecological balance in marine environments | Founders: Tim Grose | byssal.com.au ➡️ Clear Carbon (Perth, Australia): turning connected operational data into lower emissions, less water waste and measurable gains for business and nature | Founders: Hemal Modi | clearcarbon.com.au ➡️ Living Oceans (Perth, Australia): a scalable coral aquaculture platform, replacing wild-collected livestock today and funding tomorrow's reef restoration | Founders: Ben Brayford Jayden Harp Martina Brayford Tom Vogel | livingoceansaquariums.com ➡️ Myco Metals (Perth, Australia): using funghi to liberate valuable metals from mine waste and tailings, at a fraction of the cost of toxic chemical processing | Founders: Tony Pfaff | mycometals.com.au ➡️ PROXGRID (Brisbane, Australia): an aerial robot that maintains live power lines, cutting wildfire risk and outages while unlocking grid expansion for renewables | Founders:Rasmus Gupta Aiden Cairns | proxgrid.com ➡️ Rare Flora (San Francisco, USA): using plants to restore land and recover critical minerals from mine tailings and waste | Founders: Ying Sun Anthony Aylward | rareflora.bio Since launching two years ago, the accelerator has now backed 30 nature tech startups alongside the WA Government, helping them secure A$10 million in follow-on capital and unique access to Government stakeholders and industrial partners like Rio Tinto and HSBC – cementing Western Australia as a global hub for nature-positive innovation. Welcome to the programme, Byssal, Clear Carbon, Living Oceans, Myco Metals, PROXGRID and Rare Flora. Learn more about the WA Nature Tech Accelerator: foundersfactory.com/western-… #NatureTech #WesternAustralia #Sustainability #Biotechnology #Innovation #EcosystemRestoration #NaturePositive

Aviva and Founders Factory are extending our partnership to build the next generation of fintech and health startups. One of the longest-standing corporate venture partnerships in the UK. Since 2016 the programme has supported 60+ startups, which have gone on to raise more than £500 million in investment. The programme now tackles insurance, wealth, property, asset management and cybersecurity. Built with AI and frontier technology at their core, this next generation of startups will change how people manage and protect their money, health and family. Portfolio companies like Tembo (mortgage lending, now reaching more people through Aviva's workplace pension proposition) and Marrow (connecting AI agents like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini directly to insurers' pricing, underwriting and policy admin systems) stand as examples of what the studio partnership has produced. Along with a list of other successes including Acre (exited to ClearScore), Valarian, Scan.com and Xapien. We're just getting started, building three new ventures every year. Read more: aviva.com/newsroom/news-and-… #VentureBuilding #Fintech #HealthTech #Insurtech #Innovation

The desires of investors and customers come from opposite places. Investors buy a story about the future. It might be a market that's about to open up, a cost curve that's about to bend, a team that can execute fast and make that future come about even faster. Customers buy a solution to a problem they already have, on a budget, timeline and risk tolerance that has little to do with a fundraising round. These two fronts require different literacies and a founder can be excellent at one while being naive about the other – and for startups in heavy industry, there’s less opportunity to pivot. Through our Future Industry Partnership with RMI, Third Derivative and HSBC, commercialising climate solutions in heavy industry, we look at how founders in this space can prepare effectively for winning customers and investors alike. Read the full article here: foundersfactory.com/articles… #Commercialisation #Accelerator #Decarbonisation #BuiltEnvironment #CriticalMinerals

What does it mean to build a healthtech within one of the leading healthcare providers in the US? We spoke to the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare accelerator cohort on the clinical validation and commercialisation avenues that emerged during their residency week in Chicago. “We came with hypotheses about how lab systems work and have actually learned a lot about data integration and validation testing.” Founders spent the residency working through a packed schedule of 1:1s and more than 20 meetings across four days, spanning radiology, cardiology, surgery, women's health, neurology, orthopaedics , primary care and rehab services. The week culminated in a showcase at MATTER, Chicago's healthcare innovation hub, where each founder pitched to a room of 60+ attendees, including Northwestern Medicine leadership, the UK Government Board of Trade, Lurie Children's, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Hyde Park Ventures and other investors and health systems. #HealthTech #Chicago #Accelerator #Residency

Nature and industry are increasingly a two-way street. If it takes a balanced water table to build a mine, it requires regenerative mining practices to ensure the land can provide for local ecosystems. If a concrete port needs to be built for shipping, why shouldn’t it also provide support to marine life, which carries knock-on benefits to fishing and farming communities? It’s this synergy that our nature tech accelerator, with the Government of Western Australia, is building towards. We’ve seen this in: ➡️ Tidal Moon’s community ownership model ➡️ Pyri’s forest fire assessment ➡️ North Australian SeaCulture’s mine rehabilitation work ➡️ Ocean Hex coastal restoration ➡️ SnailCam reducing chemical reliance on crop yields Since the programme’s launch portfolio have completed pilots with tier 1 corporates, raised over $10M AUD, and are set to expand from 30 investments with a cohort announcement coming soon. Swipe through the carousel to see more 👉 #Mining #Agriculture #Shipping #Infrastructure #Accelerator #Nature #Tech #Restoration

On October 13th the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare Accelerator concludes with a demo day in London. If you’re investing in healthcare and looking to see what’s next, this is the final chance to meet the cohort building in this space. There will be: 📣 A panel discussion on commercialising healthtech across US + European health systems 🎤 6 pitches from founders working across AI diagnostics, surgical intelligence, reproductive health, neuro-rehabilitation and clinical workflow automation 🥂 Networking with founders, accelerator partners and fellow investors The cohort spans medical imaging AI, novel biomarker discovery, real-time surgical video analysis, wearable medical devices and healthcare operations software, each validated with leading hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic. This is for pre-seed, seed, and Series A investors active in healthtech, medtech, and AI-enabled healthcare. Register your interest here: luma.com/y3ozwtt4 #Healthcare #Accelerator #fundraising #HealthInvestor #HealthTech #MedTech

🇩🇪 Berlin: Join us for an evening on the future of health innovation On October 1st, Founders Factory is bringing our team to Berlin for an evening with portfolio and future founders and operators from across the Berlin ecosystem. We're looking for the next wave of health tech founders ready to: 🚀 Access funding to take you from idea to MVP 🤝 Build with a dedicated studio team working alongside you 🔗 Gain direct access to corporate partners for pilots, customers and follow-on investment Strictly no panels or presentations, just an opportunity to meet others in the space and walk away with a few new connections. Join and learn how the studio works, meet the community, and find out what it actually takes to build your company. Who's it for: Technical founders, commercial operators, clinicians and anyone seriously thinking about starting a company in and around healthcare. The details: 📅 October 1, 2026 📍 WeWork Berlin, Rosenthaler Str. 44 🕡 6:30 PM Places are limited to keep the event intimate, register your interest here: luma.com/0r4e4skm

Last month our Northwestern Medicine accelerator cohort: Nucleo Research, Aykua, Uncovr.ai, Genie Fertility, Myonerv and Matricis.AI, travelled to Chicago for a residency week at the NM Ventures & Innovation Office. Marking the midway point in the programme, the week opened with a welcome lunch alongside the NM Ventures exec team. Founders went on to a packed schedule of 1:1s with more than 20 meetings across four days, spanning radiology, cardiology, surgery, women's health, neurology, orthopedics, primary care and rehab services. From pitching new AI implementations to Epic integration deep-dives with lead IS architects, providing hands-on validation. A highlight of the week was the cohort showcase at MATTER, Chicago's healthcare innovation hub, where each founder pitched to a room of 60+ attendees, including Northwestern Medicine leadership, the UK Government Board of Trade, Lurie Children's, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Hyde Park Ventures and other investors and health systems. Beyond the boardroom, the week built real connections — from a Chicago River architecture boat tour to a workshop on value analysis with NM's innovation team. Huge thanks to Hannah Koczka, Dr. Derman and the entire Northwestern Medicine Ventures & Innovation team for hosting, and to our founders for showing up ready to learn and build. #HealthTech #Chicago #Accelerator #Residency

Founders Factory has backed Mama Insurance, Italy's first AI-native insurance platform, in a new round led by Fastweb+Vodafone alongside Vento. Mama Insurance is tackling one of Europe's most underinsured markets. More than 50% of Italian households have no home insurance despite rising exposure to fire, flooding and theft. The platform, underwritten by Chubb, offers instant quotes, modular cover written in plain Italian, and an end-to-end purchase completed entirely online in under two minutes, distributed through a direct digital platform, agents and brokers, and embedded partnerships with leading consumer brands. The raise brings Mama Insurance's total funding to more than €2 million across equity, non-dilutive public funding and bank debt reflecting their progress past into the execution stage. With this capital, Mama Insurance will expand beyond home insurance into new personal lines and SME products, a segment where Italy's protection gap is just as structural. Congratulations to CEO Leonida Fini Zarri and the entire Mama Insurance team on this milestone. Read more about the investment in Tech.Eu: tech.eu/2026/09/14/fastwebvo… #Insurtech #AI #VentureCapital #Italy

Xapien has raised $56M to make dynamic due diligence the new global standard by which all organisations manage all third-party risk. Led by Spectrum Equity, with participation from existing investor YFM Equity Partner, the investment will fund Xapien's U.S. expansion, where the company already generates 50% of its revenue, growing the Boston office and relocating the CEO and other leaders there. Xapien's AI-native platform reads the open web, corporate records, sanctions lists and media in any language, resolving against thousands of similarly-named people and entities, to deliver human-grade due diligence, in minutes rather than days. Founders Factory has backed Xapien since 2019 with Aviva. In the years since, co-founders Dan Secretan and Shaun O'Mahony have built one of the UK's most credible vertical AI businesses. Xapien now serves 350 clients and partners across 15 countries, including Greenberg Traurig, ABB, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and KPMG, and has grown ARR more than 350% over the past 24 months. This round positions Xapien for its next phase: dynamic due diligence. Currently in beta, Xapien Live gives companies a persistent view of counterparty risk, moving organisations from static, periodic checks to continuous risk surveillance and tracking material changes in risk rather than just news mentions. Congratulations to Chris, Dan, Shaun and the entire Xapien team on this raise, and look forward to their next chapter. To celebrate the moment we look back on our feature with Dan's full account of building Xapien in 2025: foundersfactory.com/articles… Read more about the raise in Deelroom: app.dealroom.co/news/note/xa… #Fundraising #VentureCapital #AI #DueDiligence

We're excited to announce our investment with Mediobanca in finQbit, a quantum computing platform that delivers 10–300x faster and more precise financial risk calculations without requiring quant analysts to understand quantum physics. With roughly $5 trillion of OTC derivatives traded daily, banks are relying on classical-computing approximations that introduce model risk — while Basel IV and FRTB demand ever more granular, higher-frequency risk calculations from infrastructure that's already at its limit. finQbit's hardware-agnostic platform runs on classical infrastructure today, benchmarking across IBM, Rigetti, IonQ and IQM, with quantum processing units as the upgrade path as hardware matures — meaning revenue doesn't wait on the hardware roadmap. Through this partnership, Mediobanca brings deep institutional banking expertise and commercial access across European markets, while Founders Factory provides London-based access to investors, corporates and a proven track record scaling fintech. Congratulations to Tomasz Ćwik and the team. Read more in Forbes: forbes.pl/biznes/kwantowa-re… #Fintech #QuantumComputing #VentureCapital

Emerald Nuclear, a Blue Action Accelerator alumni, has been featured for its work bringing micro-reactor technology to Arctic shipping and remote coastal power. Long-haul cargo routes like the Northwest Passage are constrained by fuel but Emerald's shipping-container-sized nuclear micro-reactor (the Emerald GEM, 5MW) that could keep a vessel running for years without refuelling, cutting both emissions and logistical overhead. The same technology could also serve remote communities. Emerald is working with the Nome Joint Utility System in Alaska on a feasibility study, exploring a leasing model that would let towns swap in a floating power plant without taking on the burden of owning a nuclear facility — while spent fuel never has to stay onsite. It's early-stage but with a research reactor partnership with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Norwegian shipping company Island Offshore signed on as first commercial customer, Emerald is moving from concept toward real-world deployment. Congratulations on the progress, CEO Wesley Deason and the rest of the team. Read the full article in Knom: knom.org/2026/09/02/this-com… #OceanTech #Nuclear #ClimateTech #Shipping #BlueEconomy

North Australian SeaCulture has won Croc Pitch 2026, Northern Australia’s premier pitching competition. Hosted by the Darwin Innovation Hub and backed by Paspalis Capital, the Northern Territory Government, Business Enterprise Centre NT and Charles Darwin University, it connects ambitious founders with investors and industry leaders to win up to $1 million in venture capital. This year's finalists were drawn from a pool of applicants spanning Australia and overseas, including entries from Pakistan, India, Singapore and Hong Kong. North Australian SeaCulture, founded by Alison Duguid and an alum of Founders Factory's Nature Tech Accelerator with the Government of Western Australia, was named the winner. Growing and processing native tropical seaweed into soil products, NASC help mine sites meet rehabilitation targets current methods cannot achieve. Lab trials show up to 75% higher seed germination against a 50% regulatory benchmark, with paid trials already underway with a major miner. Judges described this year's field as the closest call in the competition's history. NASC's win reflects the strength of the team and the traction built since completing our accelerator programme. Congratulations Alison and the team on the achievement. #CrocPitch2026 #NatureTech #Seaweed #ClimateInnovation