2025 Finalist Interviews

Battery storage is fast becoming the backbone of the renewable energy transition. The real test is not installation — it is performance, profitability and grid impact at scale.

At the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, Juergen Mayerhofer, Co-Founder and CEO of enspired, represented Austria with a platform designed to solve exactly that challenge.

enspired’s AI executes thousands of optimization runs per asset each day, trading energy in near real time while accounting for battery health, market volatility and evolving regulation. The scale of decision-making is extraordinary. The focus is disciplined: maximize revenue, protect asset life and stabilize the grid.

The conversation explores how complexity becomes competitive advantage, why transparency through audited revenue data matters in a nascent market, and what it will likely take to reach 50GW of flexible energy capacity by 2035. It also looks beyond batteries to the broader flexibility landscape shaping global energy systems.

For investors, operators, policymakers and technology leaders tracking the future of energy markets, this discussion offers practical insight grounded in execution.

Watch the full interview with Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft to see how AI-driven optimization can help redefining the economics of renewable power.

Palm oil is everywhere — and it’s one of the biggest hidden drivers of deforestation. But what if oil didn’t need plantations at all?

That’s the future Kristi Lember, Global Business Developer at ÄIO, is building. From Estonia, the team is turning industrial side streams — even sawdust — into high-performance oils and fats using proprietary yeast fermentation. The result: alternatives that use a fraction of the land and water of palm oil, deliver full supply-chain transparency, and already meet the scale global food and cosmetic players demand.

With EU regulation accelerating the shift and industry actively pulling for solutions, ÄIO is moving fast — scaling from lab to tens of thousands of liters and preparing for true industrial volumes. This is what happens when science, policy, and market demand finally align — and it may redefine how the world sources some of its most critical ingredients.

Kristi Lember, Global Business Developer at ÄIO speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG‬ Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing Estonia.

We’ve all felt it. Software keeps getting smarter, AI keeps getting bigger, data keeps exploding… and the CPU is still working the way it was designed decades ago.

So what if the real bottleneck isn’t ambition — it’s architecture?

Timo Valtonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Flow Computing, joins Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft to break down a bold rethink of compute. Their Parallel Processing Unit works alongside the CPU, offloading parallel workloads into a purpose-built engine designed to remove the latency loops that slow modern systems down.

Representing Finland in the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition and spun out of VTT, Flow Computing is stepping onto the global stage at a time when hyperscalers push the limits of silicon.

If you’re building the future of compute, or investing in it, this is a conversation you’ll want to watch.

What if plastic could simply disappear back into nature?

Jakob Röskamp, CFO of Traceless Materials, speaks with Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, representing Germany.

Traceless Materials has created a natural substitute for plastic made from bio-based residues that do not compete with food production. It contains no artificial polymers and, unlike most bioplastics, does not require industrial composting. In around 60 days, the material breaks down in nature and returns to the biological cycle as nutrients for plant growth.

The company was founded in response to demand from a major e-commerce customer seeking an alternative to conventional plastics. Today, it focuses on applications where reuse and recycling systems are hard to implement, including coatings, films, adhesives, and injection-moulded items.

With a new demonstration plant being commissioned in Hamburg and growing interest beyond Europe, the next phase is about scaling production and securing the capital to support it.

Watch the full interview to hear how Traceless Materials is building a material designed for real-world conditions and global markets.

Meet Violet: The robot helping revolutionize operating rooms

Operating rooms sit empty every day, even though they’re some of the most expensive rooms in healthcare. Akara is changing that.

Nurses spend up to 40% of their time on manual paperwork, and operating rooms can sit idle between surgeries. Akara’s AI platform brings real-time visibility to what’s actually happening, and its autonomous robot, Violet, steps in the moment a room is ready.

Using privacy-safe thermal vision and advanced AI, Violet navigates around people and equipment, disinfects rooms on its own, and cuts operating room turnover time by up to 4x.

For patients, this means shorter waits and faster access to care. For hospitals and investors, it unlocks more capacity from the most expensive rooms in healthcare. And for anyone curious about what’s next, it shows how AI and robotics are already delivering real results, not promises.

Niamh Donnelly, Co-Founder and CTO of Akara speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing Ireland.

Recruiters everywhere know the feeling — hundreds of applications open, inbox overflowing, and the sense that top talent might be slipping through the cracks.

At the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, representing the Netherlands, Lotte Welten, Founder of Selection Lab, speaks with Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft about rethinking hiring in the age of AI.

Selection Lab’s AI assistant, Lexi, supports recruiters who are swamped with applications by automating up to 85% of the workload. From the first smart chat to tailored, scientifically validated assessments and self-scheduled interviews, the process is structured, transparent and built around predictors of success for each role. The recruiter remains in control at every stage, with full visibility over who progresses and why.

Beyond saving time and reducing drop-off rates, the real shift is toward objective, data-driven hiring that can improve retention and help organizations build more diverse teams — without relying on gut instinct.

If you’re interested in how responsible AI can make hiring smarter, fairer and more effective on a global scale, this conversation is well worth a watch.

Most companies are still defending yesterday’s systems against today’s attackers and that gap is growing fast.

With 100 new vulnerabilities emerging every day, annual security tests no longer work. Attackers move faster than patches exist. Jorge Monteiro, Founder and CEO of Ethiack explains why traditional scanners create noise instead of clarity, how real threats are proven, not guessed, and why continuous testing has become essential, not optional.

He also challenges common assumptions about compliance, AI, and what it actually means to be secure.

If you’re responsible for protecting your organization, this is a clear, practical look at what modern cybersecurity really demands.

Jorge Monteiro, Founder and CEO of Ethiack speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing Portugal.

How do you turn retired EV batteries into reliable, grid-scale energy storage — and do it at global scale?

Paula Runsten, Co-Founder and CEO of Rebaba, joins Beyond Innovation’s Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, with Rebaba representing Sweden.

Paula shares how Rebaba is building a battery-agnostic platform that works across more than 40 EV models, unlocking 70–80% remaining battery capacity and putting it straight back to work on the grid.

From local circular hubs that scale globally, to safety-first hardware and software, to zero-carbon storage that can already compete on price with new batteries, this conversation cuts through the hype and gets practical about what it really takes to scale energy storage today. 

If you care about the future of energy, circular innovation and resilient infrastructure, check out the full interview below!

Financial affordability data shouldn’t be trapped in silos while people are trying to get help.

Rachel Curtis, Founder and CEO of Inicio AI, sits down with Beyond Innovation’s Michael Bancroft during the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 program, where she represents the UK, to talk about how Inicio AI’s digital agent, Budgie, is changing the way affordability information is shared.

The focus is straightforward: one standardized budget that a consumer completes once and can use across multiple lenders. For someone managing significant debt and fielding calls from different organizations, repeating the same sensitive information over and over can be overwhelming. Rachel explains how giving people a single, portable budget removes friction and brings consistency to the process.

Budgie was designed to feel supportive and non-judgmental, guiding users through financial questions in a way that encourages honesty rather than embarrassment. Built on thousands of real interactions, the system adapts to how people respond, helps surface unclaimed government benefits, and connects them into a broader fintech support network when needed.

The interview also explores the practical work behind “passporting” data in the UK, including efforts to make the Standard Financial Statement more uniform and easier for organizations to adopt. With AI handling much of the process and human oversight in place for vulnerable customers, some organisations have reduced call times from nearly an hour to just minutes.

Watch the full interview to hear how Inicio AI is approaching affordability, regulation and real-world implementation.

Can AI hear wind turbine blade damage before it becomes a million-dollar failure?

Balca Yılmaz, Co-Founder and CEO of Werover, explains how the company is transforming wind turbine blade maintenance through an acoustics-based monitoring system that works while turbines remain fully operational. Instead of shutting down turbines for infrequent inspections, Werover’s IoT device listens to the sound of spinning blades and sends the data to the cloud, where machine-learning algorithms identify early signs of damage such as lightning strikes, cracks, erosion, and delamination.

By detecting problems early, operators can avoid months of downtime and blade replacements that can exceed $1 million, reducing repairs to a matter of days and a fraction of the cost. The technology is designed to complement drone and rope inspections by providing real-time warnings that allow maintenance teams to act before damage becomes critical.

Watch the full interview below to understand how AI and acoustics could redefine reliability in wind energy worldwide.

Werover's Balca Yılmaz speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing Turkey.

Green hydrogen has long been caught between high cost and high performance. Electrogenos is challenging that assumption. Alfredo Saenger, Co-Founder and COO of the company, speaks with Beyond Innovation’s Michael Bancroft about a fundamental redesign of hydrogen production that moves away from expensive precious metals while maintaining high, independently validated efficiency. The technology is already operating in real systems, with manufacturing costs that are competitive on a global scale and hydrogen that, in many use cases, undercuts fossil alternatives. 

With validation from leading UK institutions and a clear path from pilot scale to industrial deployment, this conversation points to how heavy industries such as steel, cement and shipping could begin to decarbonise sooner than expected. Filmed as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, representing the UAE.

Gene therapy promises to cure disease at its genetic root. The challenge has always been delivery.

Ali H. AlHasan, Founder and CEO of NanoPalm | نانو بالم, explains why most gene therapies end up trapped in the liver, and how AI-designed biological “biorobots” could allow treatments to reach organs that have long been out of reach.

NanoPalm is rethinking drug delivery by changing the shape, charge, and architecture of nanoparticles, enabling therapies to move beyond today’s limitations. This conversation explores the shift from complex, costly ex vivo treatments to direct in vivo delivery, with an early focus on sickle cell disease and its impact across the Middle East and Africa.

With access to a proprietary dataset of over 800,000 nanoparticles, NanoPalm is training AI on entirely new data, enabling earlier insight into safety, stability, and organ targeting, and creating new opportunities for co-development with global pharma partners.

Watch the full interview to see how AI, biology, and nanotechnology are converging to shape the next chapter of gene therapy.

Ali H. AlHasan, Founder and CEO of NanoPalm, speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG‬ Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing Saudi Arabia.

What happens when private market investing becomes accessible beyond institutions and high-net-worth individuals?

Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft speaks with Sean Sanders, Founder and CEO of Altify, about using tokenization to lower the barriers to assets such as private credit, venture capital, commodities, and crypto—bringing minimum investment levels down to as little as $10.

We discuss Altify’s origins in institutional wealth management, the challenges of liquidity and long lock-up periods in private markets, and how a fully digitized, compliance-led infrastructure can operate across multiple regulatory environments. We also explore the role of AI in helping users better understand complex investment products without replacing human judgment.

Filmed as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 Competition, this interview features Altify representing Southern Africa.

Most of the world’s organic waste is wet. Food scraps, sewage and factory by products are abundant, yet difficult and expensive to convert into energy because traditional systems rely on drying and combustion.

Atsushi Alex Mazawa, Co-Founder and CEO of Rhinoflux Inc., explains how his team is changing that equation with an electrochemical, liquid-based technology that operates more like a battery than a furnace. Biomass charges a specially designed liquid, electricity is discharged, and up to 2,000 kilowatt-hours of power can be generated from a single ton of typical wet waste—without the costly drying step.

The process also delivers high-purity biogenic CO₂, originally captured from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. That CO₂ can be reused in applications such as carbonated beverages, dry ice and chemical production, unlocking environmental and commercial value at the same time. With pilot partners including The The Coca-Cola Company and Veolia, the company is scaling in Japan and preparing for expansion into the United States and Europe, where the market for biogenic CO₂ is accelerating.

Atsushi (Alex) Mazawa, Co-Founder and CEO, Rhinoflux speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator competition, representing Japan, where they were crowned the global winner!

Resignations don’t just disrupt teams — they drain revenue, relationships, and long-term value.

Bo Discarga, Founder and CEO of Betterteem, joins Beyond Innovation’s Michael Bancroft to unpack how artificial intelligence is helping companies predict which employees are likely to leave — before they do. In the Philippines, the world’s second-largest outsourcing destination, billions are lost each year to unwanted turnover. Across Asia-Pacific and globally, the impact is even greater.

Betterteem identifies at-risk employees with 88% accuracy, drawing from performance, learning, upskilling and engagement data to give leaders clear options to act early. The data points to a critical insight: while compensation matters, manager relationships and growth pathways often determine who stays. From financial services firms protecting millions in assets under management to enterprises reducing HR workload by half, predictive retention is reshaping how organizations manage talent.

Featured as part of the KPMG Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition, representing the Philippines. This conversation shows how AI built in Southeast Asia is tackling a workforce challenge faced by companies worldwide.

Grassroots sport doesn’t lack talent, it lacks access. Jeet Karmakar, Founder and CTO of StepOut, reveals how his company is reshaping sports analytics by turning everyday match footage into elite-level insights, without the cost or complexity of traditional camera systems.

StepOut matters because it gives coaches, academies, and young players the power to make smarter decisions, faster, while keeping human judgment, data ownership, and trust at the center of the game. 

If you care about the future of sport, performance, and how AI can help serve people rather than replace them, this conversation shows what that can actually look like.

Jeet Karmakar, Founder and CTO of StepOut, speaks to Beyond Innovation's Michael Bancroft as part of the ‪KPMG‬ Private Enterprise Global Tech Innovator 2025 competition representing India.