Hello Tomorrow 2026: Deep Tech Reports From the Field
The 11th edition of the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge came to Amsterdam for the first time. The 26 finalists weren't pitching moonshots, they were reporting from the field.
Hello Tomorrow brought its Global Challenge to Amsterdam for the first time, and the city delivered a cohort that made the event's argument better than any stage presentation could. The 26 finalists selected from more than 4,800 applications across 10 deep tech tracks were not pitching moonshots — they were reporting from the field: revenue earned, industrial pilots running, peer-reviewed papers published. The venture panels at the accompanying Deep Tech Venture Summit confirmed what the cohort showed: the correction is real, and the capital is moving toward things that require time, infrastructure, and a working prototype to exist at all.
The Grand Winner
endogene.bio [Healthtech] took the €100,000 Grand Prize at the 11th edition of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge. The French company reads the biology of endometriosis from a sample of menstrual blood, turning a non-invasive test into both earlier diagnosis and patient-specific drug development. Founder Cristina Fernández Molina took the Amsterdam stage with what the judges recognized as an outstanding pitch and a well-deserved win — applying molecular diagnostics to a disease that affects roughly 10% of women globally and has historically been underserved by both clinical attention and capital.
Special Awards
Remedium Energy [Climate Tech] won the Emerging Pioneers Award. The French company is slashing the cost of industrial carbon capture with Limeloop, a sorbent that captures 36 times more CO₂ at 80% lower cost than conventional approaches, paired with a heat battery that cheaply recharges it for reuse.
Rhizome Labs [AI] won the AI Horizons Award. Also based in France, Rhizome builds lightweight neural networks that run on tiny edge devices with as little as 8MB of RAM and keep learning from real production data, no cloud required.
Track Champions
The full list of 13 track winners will be published by Hello Tomorrow in the coming days. Three confirmed track champions from the competition:
EnKoat [Sustainable Construction] won the Sustainable Construction & Infrastructure track with a phase-change thermal coating deployed across one million+ square feet of commercial roofing, DOE-validated for up to 30% energy savings, and nationally distributed.
Bio Clean Carbon [Climate Tech] won the Climate Tech & Environment track with advanced biological carbon capture and soil-sequestration technology.
Cetos Water [Resource Efficiency] won the Resource Efficiency track with an industrial AI monitoring platform designed to optimize high-volume water recycling loops.
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Standouts
Rock Zero [Climate / Energy] — Circular lithium refining from hardrock, with a process that cuts waste and emissions versus conventional hydrometallurgy. They've run a kg-scale mini-pilot in Cambridge, Massachusetts for over 1,000 hours, tested against 15+ commercial feedstocks, and published peer-reviewed validation in Science (May 2026). Toyota Ventures and Azolla Ventures are in. Commercial contracts signed with Tier 1 mining companies. Raising ~$15M Series A to build a large-scale North American pilot refinery.
TETMET [Robotics / Hardware] — Fully automated factory technology targeting western reindustrialisation. €750k in pilots already sold to Airbus, Stellantis, Safran, CNES, Ariane, Volvo, and Renault. Currently building their first factory with a €5.5M/year orderbook. First large-scale structures for space, defense, and nuclear roll out Q4 2027.
Naco Technologies [Climate / Energy] — Nano-coated components reducing critical material use in clean energy systems while improving durability. Serving 50+ customers globally including Siemens Energy, Toyota, and Hyundai. €1.7M revenue in 2025. Next: a catalyst coating for data center power generators that cuts emissions ~2x using 10x less platinum and palladium.
Mothership Materials [Materials] — Molecular feedstock infrastructure for biomanufacturing, recovering glucose and high-purity cellulose from agricultural waste using physics-based separation. Two products market-ready, $100M+ inbound pipeline, signed with several of the world's largest corporates, and four weeks from industrial operational status at time of the summit.
AQUIT [Biotech] — AI-powered biotech modulating natural immunity in livestock and aquaculture, reducing antibiotic use across the supply chain. Backed by Hatch Blue, the leading global aquaculture fund. LOI signed with Multi X — the second-largest salmon producer in Chile — for an industrial pilot treating one million fish in Q3 2026. Advancing discussions with Cargill Global for Norway trials.
DATALOBSTER [AI / Industrial] — Plug-and-play IoT and AI platform for predictive maintenance on the 50% of industrial equipment that existing solutions can't monitor. Active PoC deployments with TechnipFMC in Brazil and Texas. In partnership talks with Augury ($300M raised) to distribute across 40 countries. Raising €2M pre-seed.
Elonroad [EV Infrastructure] — Automatic, cable-free, high-power charging for industrial fleets. Ten live commercial deployments across ports and logistics sites in Sweden, Norway, France, Finland, the US, and Malta. €7M in signed orders over 12 months. Four of the world's top 10 port terminal operators in active discussions. Selected by the French government for the A10 highway electric road project outside Paris.
HuntX Pharma [Healthtech] — First-in-class oral small molecules restoring axonal transport across 50+ genetically defined neurodegenerative diseases, starting with Huntington's. Cross-disease efficacy demonstrated in Rett syndrome and Parkinson models. €1.7M seed raised. Raising €5M to reach Phase 1.
YAMA [Climate / Energy] — Retrofit electrified carbon capture for gas-fired power, enabling low-carbon electricity for AI data centers. Pilot running in France for over a year. $1.1M from the Temasek Liveability Challenge 2026 for a Singapore demonstration plant. $200M+ commercial pipeline.
AraBat [Climate / Energy] — Lithium battery recycling using orange peels and biomass. Lab and pilot-scale validation complete (TRL 4 and TRL 6). Agreement with Japanese multinational Taiyo Yuden. First proprietary pilot facility launching 2026.
FUST Lab. [Cleantech] — Ultrasound-based PFAS destruction for semiconductor, apparel, and pharmaceutical wastewater. Validated by Japan's Ministry of the Environment and in Korean groundwater field tests.
Pregnolia AG [Healthtech] — CE-marked diagnostic platform for early preterm birth risk assessment. 2,750+ measurements across European and US clinical studies. €12M+ raised. Reimbursement live through Swiss supplementary health insurers.
CircuCare [Healthtech] — Wearable AI-robotic ultrasound for automated continuous cardiac imaging. 55+ patients tested under IRB-approved studies. First-place recognition from the American Society of Echocardiography. FDA 510(k) pathway confirmed.
Kozhnosys [Healthtech] — Robotic breath-test device for early breast cancer detection, validated on 600+ participants at 95%+ accuracy. ICMR-supported clinical validation underway in India. Raising $5M for commercial launch and global regulatory filings.
ScreenSYS [Biotech / AgTech] — AI-powered doubled haploid platform delivering 30x faster screening speed and 20x greater discovery efficiency for crop breeders. Partners include Corteva, Limagrain, Nordic Seed, and the Max Planck Institute.
CryoBio [Biotech / AgTech] — Biological frost protection for agriculture, targeting $50B+ in annual crop losses. $1.3M pre-seed raised. Small-scale production process ready to scale.
NXW Nutrition from Water [Biotech] — Microalgae-derived protein and fiber ingredients at industrial scale, targeting the dairy protein supply gap. Partnerships across multiple continents. Scaling production.
alteva [Climate / Energy] — Ultralight batteries made in Europe. Multiple MoUs in place. MVP presentation to customers July 2026.
nanoCaps [Hardware] — Carbon nanotube electrodes delivering 3–4x higher energy density for supercapacitors. TRL 6. First commercial order secured. EIC Seal of Excellence.
Cosmic Soul AI [AI] — CPU-native architecture running 70B parameter models on everyday devices with no GPU or cloud dependency. 2B parameter model validated at under 300MB RAM. Incubated at IIT Madras.
BotBot [Robotics / Hardware] — Universal edge AI brain for humanoid and quadruped robots. BotBrain platform live and gaining traction. Contracts closing with multinationals in healthcare, mining, and oil and gas. NVIDIA Inception program. Series A underway.
Bubble Robotics [Robotics / Hardware] — Autonomous underwater robotics for ocean industries. $4M in signed LOIs representing $45M+ ARR upon conversion. $7M raised pre-seed.
Eddytec [Robotics / Hardware] — Fast defect detection in carbon composites for aerospace and mobility. 9 letters of intent. 4 paid pilots including an aerospace Tier 1 supplier.
syntonym [Privacy Tech] — Visual data anonymization for cameras. Early-stage, pre-Series A.
Shit2Power [Climate / Energy] — AI-optimized containerized gasification turning industrial sludge into on-site electricity and heat. €509k pre-product revenue. First pilot at Weinheim wastewater plant, full-scale setup August 2026. 146 inbound leads. Raising €2.5M seed.
Why It Matters for the UpNext Network
Hello Tomorrow has always been where deep tech goes to get serious. The Amsterdam edition confirmed the shift: the hardware cohort has paying customers, the biotech cohort has industrial pilots, and the materials companies are weeks from production. A French healthtech company just took the Grand Prize for making endometriosis diagnosable from a blood sample. If your mandate touches any of this, the back half of 2026 is worth watching closely.
