HumanX 2025 Pitch Competition Winners

Pitch competitions are a great way for startups to gain visibility, interest, and even funding–and with HumanX attendees including Midas investors, renowned VCs, and globally recognized journalists, our first-year event was the perfect launching pad for today’s AI startups. 

We are dedicated to supercharging everyone’s AI journey at HumanX, and that includes inspiring the next wave of AI innovation onsite. This notion is what led to our GoogleCloud-sponsored, multi-day startup pitch competition at HumanX 2025. 

It began with hundreds of applications. Among the countless number of qualified startups in the AI space, a special cohort of 15 were selected. This included: 

• Arcanna.ai
• BRANDRANK.AI
• deepmirror
• Dobs.AI
• EVE
• Evercopy
• Illumicell.ai
• Inner Peak AI
• instalily AI
• Jona
• Lately
• LedgerUp
• Nomad AI
• Team Finnt
• YOUTH

Ranging from payment automation software to AI-powered creative suites, this cohort represented some of the most truly groundbreaking developments in the AI space today. And starting on Day 1 of HumanX 2025, they took to our Showcase Stage to demonstrate their products and ideas in front of an expert-led panel (featuring judges from companies like M13, FPV Ventures, Google, and more). Through a series of 3 rounds, our panelists selected the companies who caught their eye, narrowing down the competition until we reached our final four: BRANDRANK.AI, Illumicell.ai, Jona, and Dobs.ai. 

From there, a winner was chosen: BRANDRANK.AI, an AI marketing platform that provides brand leaders with the tools and guidance to understand their current rankings and propel themselves forward. The grand prize for this Cincinnati startup included $15,000 in cash, $15,000 in Google advertising, access to the Google Next conference, and an introduction to Google Ventures – the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc. We want to offer our sincerest congratulations and best wishes to BRANDRANK for their exceptional performance!

However, just because we crowned a winner doesn’t spell the end for the other participating startups; in fact, instalily AI and Lately made such an impact on our judges from Google that they were invited to participate in the Google for Startups AI Accelerator program! Congratulations to the rest of our startups cohort and we wish you the best of luck in building on the interest and networking you began at HumanX. 

If you or someone you know may be interested in joining the HumanX 2026 pitch competitions, visit https://www.humanx.co/startups regularly for upcoming details and deadlines. We hope to see you onstage in Silicon Valley.