Four Student-Founded Companies Win Cornell Tech Startup Awards

Startups Aiseptor, Custos, Kindred and Lola won $100,000 investments during the university’s annual Startup Awards competition, held May 14.

Around 1,000 students, university leaders, entrepreneurs and tech executives gathered on the Cornell Tech campus for the event to hear 11 finalist teams pitch startup ideas. This year’s cohort tackled a wide range of technological challenges, from AI safety and agentic systems to predictive healthcare, satellite collision risk, and legal and financial decision making.

The Startup Awards are a capstone of the Studio program, a core component of the Cornell Tech master’s degree. In their final semester, students can choose to form teams and enroll in Startup Studio, where they develop, test and refine startup ideas in an academic setting.

The Startup Award winners will receive post-academic investments valued at $100,000, along with studio space and ongoing mentorship – to help transform pre-seed companies into scalable ventures in New York City.

The winning teams are:

• Aiseptor stops AI exam fraud by installing a built‑in security layer on candidates’ devices to block unauthorized tools during high‑stakes exams – instead of trying to catch cheating after it happens. It was founded by master’s degree students Akshay Aggarwal, Sanjay Ram, Divya Kheraj Bhanushali and Sudhakar Padmanaban.
• Custos wraps existing payment infrastructure with programmable spending policies, real-time enforcement and full audit trails so companies can safely delegate financial transactions to AI agents as they automate more of their operations. It was founded by master’s degree students Carlos Guerrero Spota and Chloe Wang.
• Kindred offers an AI reasoning engine that maps thousands of pages of medical device regulation into structured, traceable checklists. It was founded by master’s degree students Julia Klingberg and Aagam Bakliwal.
• Lola uses AI to capture a company’s institutional knowledge from past contracts, decisions and policies, then automates routine approvals with consistent judgment – starting with legal and expanding across every business function. It was founded by master’s degree students Andrea Solano Abello, Björn Langer and Zane Mroue.

Two runner-ups were also selected: CoagHealth and MedComm. These teams will receive office space and mentorship through the Runway program at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute.

• CoagHealth predicts blood clot risk in cancer patients up to nine days in advance using only routine lab work already collected during care, giving clinical teams a window to intervene before a life-threatening event. It was founded by master’s degree student Medi Tolou.
• MedComm conducts automated follow-up calls and messages with heart failure patients in the 30 days after discharge, reinforcing care plans and alerting clinical teams immediately when a patient’s responses signal deterioration. It was founded by master’s degree student Royi Rozen.

“The Startup Awards bring together students in law, engineering, computer science, design, health tech and business to build companies side by side,” said Greg Morrisett, the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech, who delivered opening remarks before finalist teams took the stage to pitch their companies. “This work was made possible by an interdisciplinary approach and new ways of building with AI that help students move fast and take on problems that don’t fit neatly into one field.”

The winners were announced by Andrew Ross Sorkin ’99 – award-winning journalist, founder and editor-at-large of The New York Times DealBook, co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box, author of “1929” and “Too Big to Fail,” co-creator of Showtime’s “Billions” and member of the Cornell Tech council.

The Studio program is led by Chief Practice Officer Josh Hartmann, along with Startup Studio instructors Jenny Fielding, Sam Dix and Alberto Escarlate, who served on the judging panel alongside other founders and industry leaders.

“More than 30 teams competed in Startup Awards this year – a record for us – and it tells you something important about this moment in AI,” Hartmann said. “Our students aren’t just building with these tools; they’re rethinking how entire industries work.”

Students also presented projects from Cornell Tech’s PiTech Impact Studio, where teams work with nonprofits and public-sector partners to build technology in service of the public good, and BigCo Studio, which focuses on developing innovative solutions in collaboration with large, established companies.

Since the launch of the Startup Awards, more than 128 startups have been founded at Cornell Tech, including projects from Studio and the Runway program, for postdoctoral founders, at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. These startups have collectively reached a valuation of more than $1.3 billion and raised over $500 million in venture capital across sectors including AI, digital health, fintech, legal tech, sustainability and media.

Other finalist teams competing in the 2026 Startup Awards included Daunt, Ephemeris, NYX Labs, PaShield and TMoM.

Grace Stanley is the staff writer-editor for Cornell Tech.