Our winners

Take a look at our winning companies over the past 12 years

We have announced our 2025 winners!

2025 winners press release

Who are they?

We are very proud of the achievements of our 72 winners, who have been selected from hundreds of applicants over the last twelve years.

In that time our winners have gone on to raise a combined total of over £200m in equity investment and grant funding, one has announced a £28m trade sale. We’ve also seen the winners expand overseas, enter commercial contracts, conduct clinical and industrial scale trials, and collectively double their number of employees.

Read about all our winners’ cutting-edge technologies below.

2025 winners

Cardiff Catalysis Institute

Hydro-Oxy: in-situ hydrogen peroxide synthesis for sustainable chemical production
2025 Enabling Technologies winner
LinkedIn

Hydro-Oxy is a new innovative catalytic technology decoupling chemical synthesis from industrial hydrogen peroxide production. Generating hydrogen peroxide in-situ, we can achieve significant improvements in process intensification, safety and efficiency, reducing environmental impact and lowering manufacturing costs, whilst rivalling the performance metrics of the state-of-the-art industrial processes.   

 

 

 

“We’re absolutely flabbergasted. This is recognition of this technology and over 20 years of hard work from previous students and members of the team – it’s fantastic. The first thing is the recognition for such a prestigious award from the RSC. This will allow us to have very meaningful conversations and give us that clout, to show that we know what we’re doing and that we are a big players in this field.”

Richard Lewis, Entrepreneurial Lead, Hydro-Oxy (Cardiff Catalysis Institute)
More info...

PlantSea

Plastic-free water-soluble films to replace PVOH for packaging applications

 
2025 Environment winner
LinkedIn

Plantsea have developed a unique and scalable seaweed biorefining process to produce a new raw material to replace PVA/PVOH for the encapsulation of laundry detergents and chemicals. The product is cost comparative with PVOH, elastic, heat sealable, has a long shelf life, and is compliant with dissolution standards.

 

https://plantsea.co.uk/  

 

“The standard of competition, the technologies that everybody's working on this year are so incredible, so amazing, so we’re really grateful, and a bit in shock. The prestige is immense for us. We're currently going through an investment round, so hopefully it's something that really helps us finish off. And of course, the cash is always super helpful for a startup company. It’ll help with legal fees, as we'd like to file a couple more patents, and we're now doing some more commercial deals with some potential customers, but also it will fund some key trials that we need to do.”

Alex Newnes, CTO and Co-Founder, Plantsea
 
More info...

University of Liverpool

Synthetic Teixobactins: multitargeting antibiotics to combat resistant superbugs
 
2025 Health winner
LinkedIn

The Univeristy of Liverpool have pioneered a robust, scalable, and automated synthetic platform to develop a new class of antibiotics—synthetic teixobactins. These antibiotics effectively eliminate drug-resistant bacterial pathogens without detectable resistance. Leveraging cost-effective components, our technology offers a compelling solution to antimicrobial resistance, potentially saving millions of lives around the world.

 

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/ishwar-singh


“It's an amazing feeling. It was a very tough competition so I'm actually in shock at the minute that we won. This will have a huge impact for us in the sense that it gives us recognition, but also gives us a structure at the same time. We're already planning to open a spin-out, so this is going to help in the sense that I can free my time in lab and focus more on the business side of things.”

Anish Parmer, CEO and Co-Founder, University of Liverpool
 
 
More info...

2024 winners

Ignota Labs

SAFEPATH: Causal AI-driven mechanistic understanding of drug safety failures
 
2024 Health winner
LinkedIn
Ignota Labs have developed a novel AI platform to understand the root causes of safety problems in drug discovery. By combining Deep Learning models to predict how the drug interacts with the body, with algorithms over complex data, we can understand the biological impact of those interactions, enabling drug failure turnaround.

ignotalabs.ai
“We're currently raising our seed round so being able to tell investors that we've won such a prestigious award from this institution is definitely going to help us along our way and really give that validation that we need.”

Layla Hosseini-Gerami, Chief Data Science Officer, Ignota Labs
More info...

Imperial College London

Re-inventing Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis
 
2024 Enabling Technologies winner
Imperial College London have innovated solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) to allow the synthesis of multiple peptide fragments on a single bead, departing from the conventional method of synthesising only one fragment per bead. This advancement promises to significantly boost the productivity of existing peptide analogues and facilitate the synthesis of first-in-class analogues.

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/pharmacy/people/profile/othmanalmusaimi.html
“It's a very nice recognition from a prestigious institution like the Royal Society of Chemistry. It's actually kind of a push and we feel that we are doing really well, so we are very happy with this kind of recognition.”

Dr Othman Almusaimi, Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry, Orthogonal Peptides
 
More info...

ThioTech

Sustainable sulfur containing technologies for capturing toxic metal compounds
 
2024 Environment winner
LinkedIn

ThioTech utilise the low-cost and abundant industrial waste product, elemental sulfur, combined with sustainably sourced chemicals, to make high sulfur content materials that can be used as next-generation absorbents to remove toxic metal residues from water, oil, and gas, thereby preventing environmental release and contamination, potentially outperforming incumbent technologies.

www.thiotech.co.uk

“The competition was really stiff, everybody in there deserved it, and I'm really honoured and also emboldened to see that finally a panel of true experts value the technology as much as we do. It's incredible, and that really gives us the motivation to go forward.”

Liam Dodd, Chief Operating Officer, ThioTech Ltd
 
More info...

University of Cambridge

H2Upgrade - hydrogen production from industrial waste gases and solvents
 
2024 Energy winner
 
Hydrogen is a promising carbon-free fuel but its current production methods rely on fossil methane or expensive electrolysers. In contrast, H2Upgrade converts zero-value industrial wastes into high-purity H2, enabling the waste-producing companies to become H2 producers and consumers, thus, promoting the H2 economy and distributed manufacturing.
“The prize money is obviously a big help to us - we'll be using that to help us incorporate as a business, do more micro-research and help us find partners - but I think as well, there's the recognition. This gives us an opportunity to go out, get some traction and really speak to new partners and build the company. It's really great to win this award.”

Professor Stuart Scott, University of Cambridge
 
 
More info...

We are delighted to announce our winners!

The 2025 finalists pitched at the competition final on 2 July in London

If you would like to register your interest to apply for 2026 competition or interested in judging, sponsoring or being a partner of the competition, Email our Programme Manager: Emily Vipond.

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