Nebius Expands AI Discovery Awards with New Medical Tracks, Awards $1.4 Million to Healthcare AI Innovators
核心洞察
Nebius (搜索) announced winners of its 2026 AI Discovery Awards, recognizing AI-driven healthcare and life sciences start-ups across five categories including newly added Medical Devices and Medical Imaging tracks.
A total of $1.4 million in compute and inference credits was awarded, with first-place winners in each category receiving $100,000, second-place $50,000, and third-place $30,000.
The awards program drew 647 submissions from around the world, evaluated by an independent panel of 28 judges from pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and venture capital firms.
Nebius (搜索), an AI cloud company, has announced the winners of its 2026 AI Discovery Awards, an annual showcase recognizing leading start-ups that are using artificial intelligence to deliver advances in healthcare and life sciences. The expanded program now spans five categories—BioPharma, Genomics, Digital Health, Medical Devices, and Medical Imaging—with the latter two added this year to reflect the growing role of AI in connected medical equipment and diagnostic imaging.
The awards ceremony, held at Town Hall by Bottaccio in London, distributed a total of $1.4 million in compute and inference credits across category winners and regional trailblazers. Category winners each received $100,000 in compute and inference credits, with second and third place receiving $50,000 and $30,000, respectively.
Category Winners Reflect Breadth of AI Innovation
The 2026 winners span a diverse range of healthcare applications. In the BioPharma category, Phylo (搜索) took first place, followed by Virgo (搜索) in second and Decoy Therapeutics (搜索) in third. The Digital Health track saw Corti.ai (搜索) claim the top spot, with VitVio (搜索) and EverEx (搜索) placing second and third. Omniscope (搜索) led the Genomics category, followed by Twig Bio (搜索) and DELFI Diagnostics (搜索). In the newly introduced Medical Devices category, Real Time Imaging Systems (搜索) won first place, with BAIBYS Fertility (搜索) and Fluent (搜索) rounding out the top three. The Medical Imaging category was led by Nucleo Research (搜索), with Subtle Medical (搜索) and Hertility Health (搜索) taking second and third.
“Our winners – and indeed all of the 647 submissions we reviewed – reflect how rapidly AI is changing the pace of healthcare research,” said Dr. Ilya Burkov, global head of healthcare and life sciences at Nebius (搜索). “Across all categories, start-ups are compressing timelines that once took years into months or even weeks, and bringing capabilities to clinical and laboratory settings that simply did not exist before.”
Rigorous Selection Process
The 2026 AI Discovery Awards were open to companies from pre-seed through to Series D that place AI and machine learning at the core of their product. An independent panel of 28 judges representing leading pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and venture capital firms evaluated the 647 applications received from around the world. Submissions were assessed based on the use of AI within the product, use of compute, technical innovation, functionality and advantages, performance and efficiency, global impact, and market potential and business sustainability.
Regional Trailblazer Awards Introduced
For the first time, Nebius (搜索) introduced Regional Trailblazer awards recognizing exceptional companies advancing AI in healthcare and life sciences across the globe. Each regional winner received $30,000 in compute credits. The honorees included Check Me (搜索) (Africa), Hummingbird Bioscience (搜索) (APAC), Owkin (搜索) (EMEA), Arkangel AI (搜索) (Latin America), and Xaira Therapeutics (搜索) (North America).
Nebius (搜索) Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform Previewed
Alongside the awards program, Nebius (搜索) previewed the Nebius Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform, AI infrastructure built to meet the specialist needs of healthcare and life sciences organizations. Developed in collaboration with teams from across biotech, pharma, digital health, academia, and research institutions, the platform is built around two primary use cases: private model hosting, which gives biotech and pharmaceutical organizations the ability to securely host proprietary models without dedicated GPU overhead, and “Bring your Own Job,” which supports custom, reproducible scientific workflows that researchers prefer over standard inference endpoints.
Now in their second year, the AI Discovery Awards are a core part of Nebius (搜索)’s broader commitment to supporting start-ups and enterprises developing AI applications in healthcare and life sciences. Previous winners have included Transcripta Bio (搜索), Slingshot AI (搜索), Converge Bio (搜索), and Prima Mente (搜索). Dr. Burkov emphasized that the awards exist “to accelerate that momentum, and to connect the most promising teams with the compute resources, investor networks, and mentorship they need to move from promising research to bringing products to market.”