Technology
Get inspired by the best ideas from the Red Bull Basement World Final
Entrepreneurial ambitions? Check out the top 10 start-up ideas pitched in San Francisco and spark your own founder’s dream.
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With over 135,000 applications submitted across more than 40 countries, the 2026 edition of the global innovation incubator Red Bull Basement was the most competitive yet. And when the top 10 AI-powered ideas were pitched to the global judges and an audience of industry experts, venture capitalists and spectators at San Francisco’s World Final, the ingenious young founders took inspiration to new heights. Explore their ideas below.
The World Final stage in San Francisco
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
01
Canada: TruthShield AI
Joi Lan Chow pitches TruthShield AI on the World Final stage
© Todd Gutierrez/Red Bull Content Pool
Inspired in part by her own grandmother’s close call with a scammer, Joi Lan Chow of Canada is developing TruthShield AI, a comprehensive AI-based platform that scans, detects and alerts users to potential scams, all using a shared GPU system for a lower cost and environmental footprint.
The new founder, a student at the University of British Columbia, said, “In 2024, the world lost over 1 trillion to scams. That’s the entire GDP of Switzerland. TruthShield is the world’s first scam protection platform with a developer ecosystem to alert, verify and stop scams across voice, video, texts – and more – across every connected device. TruthShield is easy for the elderly, personalised for effective protection and secure, so that all your information stays on your device. As the world races toward an AI future, TruthShield ensures that no one is left behind.”
02
Denmark: Seabed Surveillance
Gustav Jacobsen’s passion is apparent in his pitch for Seabed Surveillance
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
Gustav Jacobsen, a master’s candidate in engineering and human-centered AI at the Technical University of Denmark, pitched Seabed Surveillance, a platform that “gives the ocean a voice” by using AI to monitor existing cables on the ocean floor and alert authorities to suspicious vessels.
“The ocean feeds us, regulates our climate and is home to ecosystems that have existed for millions of years,” Jacobsen said. “Yet some of its most fragile environments … remain largely unprotected from activities such as illegal fishing and poaching. Across the seabed floor lies a vast array of fibre optic cables. When a ship traverses a cable, it makes a tiny vibration, and the cable senses this vibration. Our solution listens to these tiny vibrations, enabling an early warning system when ships sail where they’re not supposed to, giving authorities a chance to intervene.”
03
Egypt: KeepUp
A rapt audience takes in Mo Abdel Fattah’s vision for KeepUp
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
Mohamed 'Mo' Abdel Fattah presented his Cairo-based startup, KeepUp: an AI-powered, customisable social network that lets users build their own mini-apps and communities. Less scrolling, more playing, creating and connecting.
Determined to build “a better version of our online world” to facilitate personal connections, the founder explained that KeepUp users can create their mini-apps centred around creators, brands, shows and moments that they love, and play them with friends. “A podcast you like can become a questions-pack to reflect on. An athlete’s mindset … can become an interactive challenge that helps you work through your life,” he said. “We don’t need more content to scroll past, we need more moments that bring us closer.”
04
Germany: Please Touch This Art
Zain Samdani and Ramin Udash demonstrate Please Touch This Art
© Todd Gutierrez/Red Bull Content Pool
Inspired by personal experience, Zain Samdani, along with fellow German entrepreneur Ramin Udash, have created a resource for blind and visually impaired people that uses AI to convert museum artworks into 3D models designed for touch, accompanied by audio guides.
The team explained that while “please do not touch” is a common advisory, for over 300m blind and visually impaired people, touch is how they experience visual art. Traditional solutions, like hand-carved models, take months to create and cost tens of thousands of Euros. “Our AI system turns paintings and sculptures into tactile models and audio guides, produced within hours, at a fraction of the cost,” said Udash. “We built this with two blind associations … and we’re now live in four museums.” Their goal is to scale Please Touch This Art to 100,000 museums globally.
05
Norway: Cephalo
Ailin Østerås explains how Cephalo can save time for teachers
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
Cephalo founder Ailin Østerås has launched an edtech start-up to make everyday life easier for teachers. As a teacher herself, while also furthering her studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, she and her team are building a digital sharing platform where educators can exchange teaching resources.
Speaking to over 600 educators, both in Norway and internationally, the Cephalo team found that teachers typically spend over 25 hours each week – outside working hours – to reinvent needed resources. By making it easy to share and customise materials, Cephalo’s platform saves precious time. Østerås said, “We work closely with teachers to ensure that we create something of real value, giving time back to what’s important: education and students.”
06
Portugal: Lumination
Lumination’s Liliana Silva and Vasco Pires answer questions from the judges
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
Vasco Pires and Liliana Silva, students at Portugal’s Instituto Superior Técnico, have conceived Lumination, an intelligent public lighting system that – instead of staying on whether it is needed or not – adapts in real time to reduce energy waste, lower costs and minimise light pollution.
Pires said, “We take existing streetlights and transform them into an intelligent grid using physics and AI. In real time, we not only detect movement, but also predict position … communicating with nearby lamps to ensure the safe, dynamic, familiar corridor of light that ensures safety is never, ever compromised.” Silva added, “We can cut a city’s public lighting bill by 30 percent,” and also cited benefits like reduced CO2 emissions and improved clarity of the night sky. She concluded, “We are not turning the lights off. We are turning them on intelligently.”
07
Slovakia: SoilScale
Krištof Piteľ drives home a point about SoilScale
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme student Krištof Piteľ pitched an agritech solution he co-founded with fellow student Tobiáš Šipöcz. SoilScale uses autonomous drones, satellite imagery and AI-driven analysis to monitor vineyards and orchards for early detection of pests and disease, with precision that can save costs and reduce blanket use of unnecessary chemicals.
Piteľ said, “Our system detects diseases and crop threats three to seven days before they are even visible. This gives farmers time to act, increasing their yield by up to 30 percent while lowering their costs and environmental impact. What makes us unique is … our system has millimetre-level precision. We believe that the future of farming should be sustainable and fully autonomous – to create food security for all – and we help farmers to optimise their operations.”
08
Spain: Biosoil
Hugo Lluch and Alejandro Aymerich aim to help farmers globally with BioSoil
© Todd Gutierrez/Red Bull Content Pool
Honours and master’s students Hugo Lluch and Alejandro Aymerich represented a team of biotech innovators in Valencia who aim to "hack" the future of agriculture. Their deep-tech platform, BioSoil, uses engineered bacteria to decontaminate land and produce biofertilisers, providing an alternative to traditional chemicals for restoring agricultural soil.
Lluch stated, “We are losing the equivalent of 1,000 San Francisco cities of productive land every single year. [But at BioSoil,] we use synthetic biology to design microorganisms to decontaminate and enhance our soils. Chemical solutions are only band-aids. We detect the problem and cut it at the root.” Aymerich added, “Our mission is global. This technology helps millions of farmers who see their future threatened. BioSoil is not another fertiliser – it brings soils back to life.”
09
Taiwan: Eyeflow
Annabeth Lu and Dr. KJ Chang make a compelling case for the Eyeflow system
© Todd Gutierrez/Red Bull Content Pool
Dr KJ Chang and medical student Annabeth Lu presented Eyeflow, a smart ophthalmology system that provides continual home-based monitoring, integrating AI analysis and clinical decision-making to detect disease progression earlier.
Representing a larger team based at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Chang mentioned that 1b people are at risk of losing their sight if their currently preventable blindness remains untreated. “As an eye doctor, I see this very often, not because medicine has no cure, but because patients are returning to us too late,” he said. The team built Eyeflow to bring clinical-grade eye testing into the home, allowing users to test 16 aspects of visual function anytime, anywhere. When visual decline is detected, Eyeflow alerts patients and doctors for timely follow-up.
10
USA: Lifeline AI
Global winner Darnell Adler celebrates with judge Sasha DiGiulian
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
The final top-10 presentation was made by San Francisco’s own Darnell Adler, who created Lifeline AI, a personal safety system that removes the need to visibly unlock a phone, dial a number or speak during an emergency, when every second counts. The judging panel found the pitch so convincing that they crowned Adler the global winner of Red Bull Basement 2026.
A recent University of Southern California graduate, Adler said, “Lifeline AI is a personal safety tool that allows users to trigger a silent SOS without ever taking their phone out of their pocket. The moment you trigger that alert, your trusted contacts receive everything in real time, with precise location, the event type and everything you need to act.” With an aim of making Lifeline AI the global standard in how people can call for help, he concluded, “Existing safety solutions assume that you’re in a position to use them. Lifeline assumes that you’re not.”
Discover more inspiration from Red Bull Basement here.
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