Meet the U.S. Finalists heading to the 2026 Red Bull Basement World Final

Sahasra Upputuru: I came across the website and I saw that they’re looking for new innovations. I remember that Safestep Secure was something I had in the back of my mind, but never a platform to pitch it properly, so this was my best opportunity.

Sahasra Upputuru: SafeStep Secure is a real-time protection platform that helps users mitigate through calls, text and emails by allowing them to have contact with a trusted adult to take over that situation.

Upputuru: My parents and a few members of my community received phone calls from what they thought was a legitimate internet service provider offering them a discounted plan, but it ended up being fraudulent and they ended up losing thousands within just a few hours. So that really pivoted what I felt about this. And both my parents are in tech, so imagine someone that's elderly or doesn't know how to use the internet or technical aspects of it.

Upputuru: My dream goal is for this to end up as an app that users can have and it would prevent scams from going through and users from actually going through with the scams. Scalability wise, it would be nice to have them in banks or in other cyber security start ups.

Upputuru: The highlight was meeting all these amazing innovators. Each of them had such beautiful pitches that they provided something different. They helped me perfect my pitch and grow – no one was in rivalry with each other – we all thought even if one of us wins, it shows that our pitches are making it somewhere.

Darnell Adler: We’re redesigning emergency infrastructure because existing safety tools fail at the exact moments when you need them the most. This idea can genuinely save lives and it's so applicable to anyone in the world. It’s a global need, there are 6.8 billion global smart phone users so being able to make the world a safer place for everybody is really important.

Adler: Since existing safety tools fail at the exact moment you need them the most, people are faced with staying in an uncomfortable situation or staying silent and giving them an option to get out of those situations is what I'm addressing and making the world a safer place.

Adler: The dream goal is to create Lifeline to be the global standard in how people can call for help. And knowing that this idea is helping people and making the world a safer place.

Adler: AI was used in a lot of aspects, from the demo to actually building it out. It worked on my backend, it worked on helping my pitch and also helped on creating a part that people will be able to use.

Adler: You should go after it. I don't think there’s a better time than now. Don't be afraid of having an idea that you think someone else had or being afraid that you don't have the expertise. Use AI! Any idea is a good idea, so just go after it.

Hayoung Ang: We were really interested in building an idea and seeing how far we can take it. We both come from pretty different backgrounds, but for me entrepreneurship is an entirely novel field. I come from medicine, media and content creation, a lot of those things that have always been passions of mine. But recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the very rapid development of technology and how I think that the people I surround myself with in the fields I am in right now – like medicine – there’s kind of a gap between those teams. So I'm really interested in bridging those gaps together, I want to see how far I can take this idea.

Ang: One of the biggest problems it aims to address is the fact that it’s so hard to see your doctor. Appointments are usually hard to schedule and follow up appointments end up being a few months out after you’ve last seen your physician. It’s even harder in specialized care, such as epilepsy care. So I was really interested in how a doctor shouldn’t just see a snapshot view of how the patient is doing during that one clinic appointment, but they should be able to accurately, and with a lot of rich data, be able to understand how their patient was doing in the months beforehand. And right now, as medicine has always been traditionally, it’s been very dependent on what the patient brings to the table in terms of what they share has been going on for them.

Xuelong Mu: AI is incredible in helping us develop a prototype. We used Replit in order to create a mockup of how the app should look and feel in terms of what the patient sees when they open it, what kind of data gets recorded, how all those signals translate into insights so that the patient can make more informed decisions about how likely they might be to have symptoms or have seizures that day. It's just really easy to build these types of mockups and prototypes using AI, so even though we haven’t connected it to real data yet, it’s much easier to pitch and sell this idea to our target customers because of these AI tools.

Mu: Going back to something I wanted to share, building healthcare technology, it's a very highly regulated and sometimes rigid space, but then you also have these beautiful moments connecting with real people you can help with the thing that you’re building. We had a chance to talk to someone today whose son was diagnosed with infantile spasms, so as an infant they were having seizures, and they were really interested in what we are building and how Neurosense might be able to help their child. So, having those real world human touch points is really motivating for us and we hope to find more of those as we develop this out and try to get this in the real world.

Ang: For me, a big highlight as a participant was truly feeling so much support, not just for our idea, but also just as people. Everyone that was here was just so encouraging and truly uplifting, reminding us of our worth and the value we’re bringing to the table just by being here. I think imposter syndrome is such an effervescent and constantly present force in everyone's life, especially as you enter a space where you have to prove yourself.