AIBC Startup Pitch 2026 Finalists Announced!

Pictured above: Last year’s winner, Allpass.ai co-founder Denys Galenko, is all smiles as he poses with the AIBC Startup Pitch winner trophy

The finalists for the AIBC Startup Pitch 2026 have officially been announced! Representing a diverse cross-section of emerging technologies: from decentralized finance and AI infrastructure to prediction markets and fintech, these finalists exemplify the next wave of disruption in the global tech landscape.

The AIBC Startup Pitch, taking place next week in Manila during AIBC Asia, provides early-stage startups with a platform to present their ideas to leading investors, industry experts, and a global audience. Designed to identify and elevate breakthrough innovation, the competition has showcased ventures that go on to drive meaningful change across blockchain, AI, fintech, and beyond. Finalists benefit not only from exposure, but also from direct engagement with venture capital firms, strategic partners, and media.

This year’s finalists represent cutting-edge solutions addressing real-world challenges while pushing the boundaries of what technology can achieve. Let’s take a closer look at the startups taking the stage:

Agent Daredevil

Agent Daredevil is positioning itself as the Bloomberg Terminal for agentic sports prediction. It offers a unified intelligence stack where live league data, market context, and quantitative analysis are found into one trusted output. Designed for both human operators and autonomous agents, the platform targets sports fans, betting enthusiasts, and prediction markets users.

At the helm is CEO Jared Dillinger, a former professional basketball player whose strong digital presence (amplified through the LetItFly Podcast and viral TikTok livestreams reaching over 500,000 viewers) brings cultural relevance and audience reach to the project. Operating at the intersection of prediction markets and gaming, Agent Daredevil aims to redefine how users engage with sports analytics and wagering.

bond.credit

bond.credit is building the credit layer for the emerging agentic economy. Its platform delivers standardized underwriting and a credit-based money market that allows DeFi and AI agents to access scalable undercollateralized credit.

By combining verifiable on-chain behaviour, identity frameworks such as ERC-8004, and advanced scoring mechanisms, bond.credit creates a canonical credit history that allocators can use to assess risk and size exposure. The platform focuses on continuous monitoring, repayment tracking, and agent-native underwriting to address a major bottleneck in decentralised finance: the lack of scalable, trust-based credit infrastructure.

DVM (Distributed Virtual Machine)

DVM offers on-prem, industrial-grade multi-party computation (MPC) solutions powered by decentralized infrastructure. Its system enables cryptographically enforced policies tied directly to key usage, ensuring enhanced security and compliance.

The platform adopts a Distributed Virtual Machine-style execution model, making it particularly suited for custodians, institutional organizations, real-world asset platforms, and any entity managing private keys or tokens within infrastructure environments. By prioritising on-prem deployment, DVM addresses growing institutional demand for security, sovereignty, and control in digital asset operations.

Salapi

Salapi is a crypto-invisible fintech platform designed for Southeast Asia, targeting over 370 million users across the Philippines and Indonesia. Built on Stellar, the platform enables users to send, save, and donate in local currencies, while transactions settle transparently on-chain.

Its unique value lies in trust-by-default. By making every donation publicly verifiable, Salapi tackles longstanding credibility issues in charitable giving. Despite leveraging blockchain infrastructure, the user experience remains entirely familiar: no crypto terminology, no wallet management, and seamless onboarding via a single Google login. Salapi operates across cross-border payments, charitable giving, community savings systems, and disaster relief.

Sonzai Labs

Sonzai Labs introduces what it calls the Mind Layer for AI agents. Its platform provides developers with an API and runtime environment that allows long-running agents to maintain persistent memory, personality, and relationship context over time.

By enabling knowledge grounding, evaluation frameworks, and model-agnostic orchestration, Sonzai allows AI agents to evolve dynamically rather than reset with each interaction. Positioned as the relationship layer for consumer AI agents, the solution empowers developers to build more intelligent, context-aware, and human-like systems while retaining full flexibility over model choice.

Poll It

Poll It is redefining online engagement through a permissionless perception market where users can create polls, stake on outcomes, and earn rewards when consensus aligns with their predictions. Unlike traditional prediction markets, Poll It relies solely on crowd-weighted resolution—removing the need for oracles or centralized gatekeepers.

Launched on mainnet on March 10, 2026, the platform has already demonstrated traction: over 45 creators, 230+ polls, and more than $30,000 staked within five weeks—entirely invite-only and without paid marketing. Creators earn a percentage of every poll, while participants are rewarded for conviction. By monetizing a behavior already prevalent across social platforms, Poll It sits at the nexus of social media and financial incentive systems.

A unique vision for the future

The AIBC Startup Pitch 2026 finalists collectively highlight the rapid evolution of decentralized technologies, artificial intelligence, and digital finance. As they prepare to take the stage, each startup brings a unique vision for the future – defined by greater transparency, intelligence, and user empowerment.

The winner will be announced during the AIBC summit, where innovation meets opportunity on a global stage. Get your tickets today to be part of the conversation