Nebius Celebrates Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovators at Expanded AI Discovery Awards

Summary:

• Recognizes pioneers in biopharma, genomics, digital health, medical devices, and medical imaging with $1.4 million in compute and inference credits
• Previews Nebius Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform, purpose-built AI cloud infrastructure for healthcare and life sciences teams

Nebius, an AI cloud company, announced the winners of the AI Discovery Awards, its annual showcase of leading start-ups that are using AI to deliver advances in healthcare and life sciences.The 2026 program added Medical Devices and Medical Imaging to the existing BioPharma, Genomics, and Digital Health tracks, reflecting the growing role of AI in connected medical equipment and diagnostic imaging, where inference-intensive workloads are beginning to reshape clinical practice.

Nebius congratulates the following winners in each category:

“Our winners – and indeed all of the 647 submissions we reviewed – reflect how rapidly AI is changing the pace of healthcare research. Across all categories, start-ups are compressing timelines that once took years into months or even weeks, and bringing capabilities to clinical and laboratory settings that simply did not exist before. The AI Discovery Awards exist to accelerate that momentum, and to connect the most promising teams with the compute resources, investor networks, and mentorship they need to move from promising research to bringing products to market,” said Dr. Ilya Burkov, global head, healthcare & life sciences, Nebius.

Alongside the awards program, Nebius previewed the Nebius Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform, AI infrastructure built to meet the specialist needs of healthcare and life sciences organizations. Developed in collaboration with teams from across biotech, pharma, digital health, academia, and research institutions, the Nebius Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform is built around two primary use cases: private model hosting gives biotech and pharmaceutical organizations the ability to securely host proprietary models without dedicated GPU overhead; while “Bring your Own Job” supports the custom, reproducible scientific workflows that researchers prefer over standard inference endpoints.

Now in their second year, the AI Discovery Awards are a core part of Nebius’s broader commitment to supporting start-ups and enterprises developing AI applications in healthcare and life sciences. Previous winners have included Transcripta Bio, Slingshot AI, Converge Bio and Prima Mente. This year’s awards ceremony was held at Town Hall by Bottaccio, London.

The 2026 AI Discovery Awards were open to companies from pre-seed through to Series D that put AI and machine learning at the core of their product. Category winners were selected from 647 applications received from around the world by an independent panel of 28 judges representing leading pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and venture capital firms. Submissions were evaluated based on the use of AI within the product, use of compute, technical innovation, functionality and advantages, performance and efficiency, global impact, and market potential and business sustainability.

Category winners each received $100,000 in compute and inference credits, with second and third place receiving $50,000 and $30,000, respectively, in compute credits.

In addition, Regional Trailblazer awards recognizing exceptional companies advancing AI in healthcare and life sciences around the globe were awarded for the first time. Winners each received $30,000 in compute credits: Check Me (Africa), Hummingbird Bioscience (APAC), Owkin (EMEA), Arkangel AI (Latin America), and Xaira Therapeutics (North America).

A full list of shortlisted companies, as well as qualification criteria and a jury list, can be found on Nebius’s website.