After three days of high-stakes pitching and innovation showcases, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 crowned its new champion: 🏆 Glīd (pronounced “Glide”) — a logistics startup redefining how shipping containers move across ports and rail systems.
Selected from a pool of 20 elite contenders in this year’s Startup Battlefield, Glīd (“Glide”) emerged as the winner of the Startup Battlefield Cup and took home the $100,000 grand prize.
⚙️ A New Way to Move the World’s Cargo
Founded by Kevin Damoa, Glīd tackles one of global logistics’ most complex bottlenecks: the transfer of shipping containers from ships to trains.
Its first flagship product, GliderM, is a hybrid-electric vehicle designed to move 20-foot containers directly from dockside to rail lines — without needing forklifts or hostler trucks. Equipped with smart hardware and integrated software, GliderM automates key steps in container handling, cutting operational costs and reducing environmental impact in ports and terminals.
As Damoa put it during the final demo,
“Our goal is simple — move goods smarter, faster, and cleaner.”
🚀 From 200 to 1: Glīd’s Path to Victory
This year’s Startup Battlefield 200 gathered some of the most promising young tech companies worldwide. Out of those, 20 were handpicked to pitch live at Disrupt 2025 before a panel of top VCs and tech leaders.
After rigorous evaluation, five finalists made it to the grand stage: Charter Space, Glīd, MacroCycle, Nephrogen, and Unlisted Homes.
Judges included industry icons such as Aileen Lee (Founder & Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures) and Kevin Rose (Founder, Digg). After hours of deliberation, Glīd’s breakthrough in automation and efficiency convinced the panel that it represented both deep innovation and clear real-world impact.
🌍 From Code to Cargo: The New Face of Startup Innovation
Glīd’s win underscores a notable shift in the startup ecosystem. While SaaS and AI still dominate, hardware and deep-tech innovation are making a strong comeback — particularly where they intersect with sustainability and real-world operations.
By solving the logistics puzzle with clean technology and automation, Glīd not only earned the spotlight but also signaled that the future of startups isn’t just digital — it’s tangible.
🧬 Runner-Up: Nephrogen
Taking the runner-up position, Nephrogen impressed the judges with its biotech innovation in gene-editing medicine delivery. Using AI and advanced molecular screening, founder Demetri Maxim’s team developed a targeted system that’s 100x more efficient in delivering gene therapies to kidney cells — a major leap for genetic medicine.
Nephrogen’s work could accelerate treatments for kidney diseases and revolutionize how precision medicine reaches specific organs.
🌍 The Bigger Picture: Disrupting the Disruptors
Glīd now joins an elite alumni club that includes Dropbox, Cloudflare, Mint, and Discord — all past participants of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield, whose collective impact reshaped industries.
Over 1,500 startups have gone through the program, raising more than $29 billion and completing over 200 exits since its inception.
This year’s battlefield showed that innovation isn’t just about code — it’s about solving real-world problems at a global scale. Glīd’s win signals a broader shift: hardware and logistics innovation are once again in the spotlight, powered by sustainability and smart automation.
🚀 Here’s the Top 5 Finalists Who Redefined Innovation
Out of hundreds of applicants, five finalists made it to the final stage after intense deliberation by TechCrunch editors and judges:
- 🏆 Glīd — The winner. Revolutionizing port logistics with hybrid-electric container-moving systems.
- 🌌 Charter Space — Making satellite operations as easy as using APIs, by offering a SaaS platform for managing satellite fleets and data pipelines.
- 🔄 MacroCycle — Building a circular economy for plastics through AI-driven chemical recycling that transforms waste into reusable raw materials.
- 🧬 Nephrogen (Runner-up) — Using AI and molecular engineering to create a targeted gene-editing delivery system that’s 100x more efficient for kidney therapies.
- 🏠 Unlisted Homes — Bringing transparency to the housing market with an AI-powered platform that uncovers off-market listings for buyers and investors.
Each finalist represented a different frontier of innovation — from space and sustainability to healthcare and proptech — but all shared one unifying thread: solving real-world inefficiencies through technology.
🌐 TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Where the Future Launches
This year’s Disrupt gathered 250+ speakers and 300+ showcasing startups, with appearances from industry giants like Google Cloud, Microsoft, Netflix, Box, Hugging Face, a16z, and Wayve.
As the event concluded in San Francisco (October 27–29, 2025), one thing was clear: innovation is thriving where industries collide — logistics meets automation, biotech meets AI, and space meets software.
Congratulations to Glīd, Nephrogen, and the rest of the finalists for proving that Disrupt’s spirit of invention is alive and accelerating.
