GoKawiilCerberus, WeGlobal AI, and LOOQ took the top three spots at the regional final of Road to TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026 and will represent Central Eurasia in Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on October 13-15, before 10,000+ tech leaders attending. The three emerged from a field of 22 finalists, chosen from a record 726 applications across 39 countries. Meet these winners at Disrupt by registering for your ticket here.
The Road to TechCrunch Startup Battlefield — run by Silkroad Innovation Hub in partnership with TechCrunch, Freedom Holding, Astana Hub, and IT Park Uzbekistan — drew nearly 50% more applications than its 2025 debut, when 485 startups from 27 countries applied. National rounds narrowed the field to 22 finalists, who pitched live at the Regional Final before 47 jurors from eight countries. AI-Dana, an AI judge, joined them as an independent juror for the second year.
“Road to Battlefield 2026 had record applications and representation from more countries than ever. The companies pitching across health tech, education, productivity, enterprise, and cyber were cutting-edge and impressive. These founders are getting global visibility at TechCrunch Disrupt, and that sends a message to the next generation: You can build locally and scale globally. That visibility is a catalyst. Road to Battlefield proves this ecosystem is thriving and that there’s a real pathway for founders here to compete on a world stage,” said Isabelle Johannessen, head of the Startup Battlefield program at TechCrunch.
It’s also a field that has gone almost entirely AI — of the 726 startups that applied this year, 84% were building AI products. All three winners fit that mold: An AI agent that hunts for security vulnerabilities (Cerberus); an AI platform for student mental health and career guidance (WeGlobal AI); and AI-powered hardware that measures who actually looks at a billboard (LOOQ).
“We had a very strong applicant pool this year, which made the final selection genuinely difficult,” said Asset Abdualiyev, founder and CEO of Silkroad Innovation Hub. “From the beginning, the idea behind Road to Battlefield has been to give talented founders a platform to be seen, heard, and connected to opportunities beyond the region. Throughout the competition, we invited experienced VCs and tech leaders from different countries, giving founders the opportunity to pitch their companies, receive feedback, and build relationships with the global startup community. The strongest teams made it through to the final, and we are proud to have TechCrunch as a partner in creating this global pathway for founders from Central Eurasia.”
The rest of the top 10 Road to Battlefield finalists included Suriy (Mongolia), TelAgri (Georgia), SeaDar (Azerbaijan), Kaptın Kaptın (Türkiye), Admyra (United States), MVSxAI (Qatar), and Soup (Kazakhstan).
The Winners
Cerberus (Uzbekistan)
First-place winner Cerberus is an AI-powered cybersecurity startup that automatically hunts for vulnerabilities in corporate IT systems. The company is addressing a problem it sees in the current generation of AI-driven security tools: Many rely heavily on general-purpose language models that can hallucinate, with potentially serious consequences when given access to corporate systems. Cerberus has already gone through 500 Global Eurasia and has been accepted into the Alchemist Silkroad — Silicon Valley Residency program.
“We were simply glad to be part of Road to Battlefield. Competing against 726 applications from 39 countries is valuable in itself, whatever the outcome,” said Aziz Akhmedkhodjaev, founder and CEO of Cerberus. “What made our pitch unique is that we’re solving a problem the market is already feeling. Everyone is writing code with AI now, vulnerabilities are appearing faster than teams can find them, and there’s no established way to let an AI agent test real infrastructure safely. We believe the judges recognized that, and we’ll do our best, treating it as a serious responsibility. We don’t intend to let our region down.”
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