#21toWatch 2026 Winners Revealed: Deeptech Founders Tackling Society's Toughest Health and Climate Challenges

6 March 2026 -  The #21toWatch Top21.2026 winners have been announced at an awards ceremony at The Glasshouse innovation hub in Cambridge.

The annual, future-facing awards showcase the next generation of high-potential founders and technically ambitious ventures emerging from Cambridge and the wider East of England. This year’s Top21 reflects Cambridge’s deeptech signature while tackling some of society’s most persistent challenges.

The list is dominated by a new wave of innovation for overlooked and under-treated health challenges including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), endometriosis, stroke recovery, maternal-fetal health, neurodegeneration and brain health - conditions that have long been underfunded and where progress has been slow despite patient need remaining high. The winning founders open new therapeutic and clinical possibilities by combining engineering, AI and life sciences, and applying precision biology, advanced diagnostics and continuous monitoring (via smart textiles and wearable technologies).

The winners’ list also includes exciting deeptech solutions tackling systemic challenges across climate and industry - including next-generation climate tech (spanning materials, infrastructure and energy storage), frontier technology to ensure clean energy, resilient energy systems, industrial decarbonisation, safer environments and trustworthy AI, and bioengineering platforms reshaping drug discovery.

Most importantly, across the list, founders are building enabling technologies designed not just to solve single problems, but capable of transforming multiple sectors simultaneously to strengthen the resilience, efficiency and intelligence of the systems underpinning modern life.

The seven Top21.2026 Companies are:

• Cyclana Bio – An interdisciplinary team combining computational and tissue-level biology to target endometriosis by addressing the extracellular matrix, a previously underexplored driver of disease.

• FactTrace – Developing core truth infrastructure for the AI era, preserving meaning and integrity as language moves between humans, systems and machines - a growing requirement for enterprise, institutional and governmental decision-making.

• Loop52 – A circular plastics platform for the automotive sector, connecting dismantlers, recyclers and OEMs to meet EU recycled-content regulations at scale.

• Protalea Bio – Developing therapies that halt the progression of cancer and neurodegeneration by targeting pre-disease inflammation before irreversible damage occurs.

• Serenatis Bio – Developing three precision-medicine drug candidates for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), targeting distinct glutamate and dopamine pathways to address a large unmet clinical and commercial need.

• Shuffle Energy – Delivering the software layer connecting heat pumps, hot water tanks and e-boilers to energy markets, reducing electric heating costs by 30–60%.

• SomNyx – An AI-powered, textile-based sleep wearable enabling clinical-grade sleep monitoring from hospital to home, supporting early diagnosis of neurological conditions.

The seven Top21.2026 People are:

• Aliki Marina Tsopelakou, CLEAR-Methane: Aliki is leading the social venture, CLEAR-Methane at Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge - developing photochemical filtration technologies for ventilation systems, improving indoor air quality while reducing atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to deliver combined public-health and environmental benefits with significant climate impact.   

• Callon Peate, co-founder, GreenMixes: a startup on a mission to build a carbon-negative future with a drop-in cement admixture, delivering the cheapest, most scalable route to fully decarbonising concrete and turning buildings into long-term carbon sinks. 

• Gemma Swan, University of Cambridge: Gemma has developed a novel, highly efficient plant transfection mechanism, integrated into a prototype device, with the aim of enabling large-scale protein production in plant systems. 

• Mila (Mahlaqua) Noor, Gates Cambridge alumna and postdoctoral Bye-Fellow: Mila is investigating cytomegalovirus placental transmission to develop antiviral strategies improving maternal-fetal health. 

• Omer Nivron, co-founder, Ötzi: A unique venture is on a mission to tackle one of the finance industry's biggest blind spots: the actual cost of climate risk. To this end, Ötzi has built the first physics-informed AI model generating risk forecasts out to 2050, which are not only more accurate than the competition but also faster and radically more cost-effective. This isn't just about better pricing for insurers; it's about a more resilient future.   

• Osarenkhoe Ogbeide, co-leader, Obasense: A startup creating a new form of low-cost, hyper-sensitive sensors using advanced nanomaterials for detecting toxic and dangerous gases and pollutants for multiple areas and industries.   

• Sara AlMahri, co-founder of Mina AI: building an agentic AI execution layer for supply chains, shifting the industry from passive information to active intelligence that takes action and - applied across procurement, logistics, and compliance for manufacturers, governments, and ports.

The seven Top21.2026 ‘Things’ (Innovations) are from:

• Cambridge Atomworks: Nuclear fission micro-reactor providing reliable power to replace diesel for energy intensive local power requirements in off-grid situations such as mining and remote communities. 

• HotHouse Therapeutics: Rewriting the future of drug discovery with BotanAI and BotanBio - AI and plant bioengineering platforms that design and make molecules no other laboratories can reach. 

• Kodiaq Technologies: Pioneering a drop-in solution for redox flow batteries - enabling scalable, battery-based, long-duration energy storage that is sustainable, globally resilient and highly investable.   

• Memorify Technologies: Emotionally intelligent memory platform using neuroscience-led AI to automatically document, organise, preserve and resurface life’s most precious moments, bringing joy and connection while safeguarding personal histories for generations to come. 

• Myonerv: Wearable medical device for monitoring and treating stroke, enabling patients suffering from upper limb paralysis to regain real-time control of their hand. 

• NANOPLUME: Scaling the manufacture of the world's lightest, thinnest insulating biomaterial, dramatically increasing energy efficiency, space efficiency and circularity. 

• Polytecks: Cambridge University spin-out pioneering smart textile technology for next-generation healthcare diagnostics; they have developed high-density e-textile electrode arrays that capture bioelectrical signals from the body’s surface with unprecedented resolution and comfort. 

Now into its eighth year, the #21toWatch awards are widely recognised as a credible marker of entrepreneurial excellence, identifying the innovators and companies set to define the future. Organised by multi-award-winning technology communications agency, cofinitive - part of international consulting firm, Cambridge Management Consulting – the programme is designed to identify early-stage companies and technologies with genuine potential to scale and deliver long-term impact, and is supported by premium sponsors from within the renowned Cambridge ecosystem.

Tim Passingham, Chairman, Cambridge Management Consulting, said: “Each year, #21toWatch gives us a vantage point across the region’s most technically ambitious early-stage companies. We are now seeing founders advancing frontier science design companies, not just technologies, and doing so with real-world deployment in mind from day one. This suggests that Cambridge’s next wave of deeptech will not only generate breakthrough science, but sustainable, scalable businesses capable of enduring impact.

“In the last 12 months, we have seen previous #21toWatch winners such as Paragraf, (Top21.2019) raise another $55million, Nu Quantum (Top21.2020) raise a further $60million and Xampla (Top21.2020) raise another $10million and generate significant commercial traction with their Morro [corr] coating. And just last week [25.02.2026], BeyondMath (Top21.2024), closed a $10million Seed extension to expand generative physics research.”

Even last year's cohort (which includes Peter Neurotech, Biotryp Therapeutics and Cellestial Health) is already raising capital and securing grants - bringing the total funding over eight years (excluding this year’s winners, Private Equity funding and previous #21toWatch winner/now unicorn, CMR Surgical) to £721,267,499.

Chris Keen, Partner and Head of Emerging Companies at Mishcon de Reya, one of the awards’ premium sponsors, added: “We work alongside founders every day and on every step of their journey as they turn bold ideas into real world impact. #21toWatch celebrates this entrepreneurial spirit - recognising the individuals pushing boundaries and building the next generation of standout businesses. Supporting this community of innovators is central to what we do, and we’re proud to be part of recognising their achievements.”

To stay informed, follow #21toWatch on all social media platforms, and at https://www.21towatch.com 

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