- The World Economic Forum announces the third cohort of its MINDS programme, featuring 26 organizations from 12 sectors and 28 countries.
- The selected organisations are leveraging AI to develop solutions with scalable and measurable impact for industries and people, including energy, scientific discovery and healthcare.
- Amid rising global investment in AI and emerging technologies, the cohort demonstrates how innovation can tackle pressing business and societal challenges.
- Learn more about the new MINDS below and here . Learn more about the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2026 here. Follow on social media using #amnc26, #2026夏季达沃斯# and #InnovateScaleImpact
Geneva, Switzerland, 2 June 2026 - Ahead of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2026, the World Economic Forum today announced the third cohort of its MINDS programme, recognizing organizations using AI and frontier technology to tackle complex global challenges. Selected from hundreds of applicants, the 26 pioneers are deploying emerging technologies to deliver scalable business and societal impact.
"AI, coupled with other technologies, is reshaping every dimension of how businesses operate and societies function," said Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer, World Economic Forum. "The MINDS programme exists to ensure the most impactful examples of that transformation are visible, validated and scalable, setting a new standard for applied AI leadership."
The MINDS (Meaningful, Intelligent, Novel, Deployable Solutions) programme identifies and showcases artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that are meaningful and can be deployed responsibly at scale. Organizations are selected through a structured evaluation process, including review by an independent international Impact Council of senior executives and subject-matter experts, which assesses applications based on innovation, impact and replicability.
"There is no shortage of ambition around AI, but turning that ambition into real-world deployment remains a key challenge," said Cathy Li, Head of the Centre for AI Excellence, World Economic Forum. "MINDS highlights organizations that have moved beyond experimentation to implementation, showcasing solutions to shared challenges that can be adapted and applied worldwide."
The new MINDS cohort reflects the growing use of AI to address global challenges. From the third cohort onwards, awardees are grouped into six impact areas: accelerating growth through productivity and innovation; building sustainable planet, energy and food systems; building healthier lives with better healthcare; expanding learning, skills, culture and opportunity; safeguarding trusted information and governance; and building resilient infrastructure and supply chains.
Applications for the next cohort are now open. Organizations embedding AI to drive strategic decision-making and create meaningful value for business and society, supported by strong governance and responsible practices, are invited to apply through the MINDS website . The next cohort will be announced at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2027 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
The 2026 MINDS organizations are advancing AI-driven solutions across the following areas:
Accelerating growth through productivity and innovation
- Valterra Platinum and Dunia Innovations: Transforming catalyst discovery through a self-driving lab where AI designs experiments, robots execute them and results continuously inform the next tests, accelerating the path from material hypothesis to validated industrial solutions while reducing reliance on costly, unstable materials.
- Molecular Universe Pte. Ltd. (SES AI Corp.): Building an agentic-AI driven platform to speed up the discovery of next-generation battery materials, enabling researchers to identify promising molecules in months instead of years, while reducing costly physical testing and accelerating energy innovation.
- Qingdao Hisense Hitachi Air-conditioning Systems Co., Ltd.: Transforming air-conditioner factories by using AI end-to-end to design production processes faster, guide flexible assembly, inspect products automatically and help teams solve factory issues before they repeat.
- KUKA and Mech-Mind Robotics Technologies: Integrating robotic intelligence and 3D vision to build robots using physical AI, turning a standard arm into a universally intelligent system without custom fixtures or reprogramming.
- Xuchang Pang Donglai Trade Group Co., Ltd. and Mettler Toledo (Changzhou) Measurement Technology Ltd.: Leveraging a single AI platform across retail operations to eliminate manual processes, reduce waste, and accelerate service to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Build a sustainable planet, energy and food systems
- Bota Biosciences: Automating biological discovery and production in synthetic biology by combining physical AI with Biology Protocol Language, a novel structured language for defining reproducible experiments - accelerating Design-Build-Test-Learn cycles from weeks to days.
- CSG Guangxi Power Grid & CSG AI Technology Co., Ltd & China Southern Power Grid: Using reinforcement learning agents to help grid operators prevent dangerous overloads on critical power lines by turning live grid data, weather forecasts and safety checks into human-reviewed dispatch recommendations within minutes
- TW SOLAR: Using AI-powered traceability and real-time anomaly detection to help solar panel manufacturers identify defects in photovoltaic cell production within minutes instead of days, improving manufacturing yield, reducing waste and increasing clean energy output.
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Lenovo: Building an AI-driven orchestration system that continuously optimizes enterprise, AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads together with cloud and data centre infrastructure, transforming energy into a schedulable resource for next-generation computing.
- Occidental: Using AI to give geologists and engineers a faster, more consistent picture of underground oil and gas reservoirs before operations begin, helping inform drilling decisions as well as enhance workforce and cost efficiencies.
Build healthier lives with better healthcare
- SBP Group: Building a governed enterprise-scale AI operating model for pharmaceutical operations by embedding specialized AI agents into critical workflows - from clinical trials and medical affairs to commercial operations and enterprise reviews. By connecting fragmented data, rules and workflows, the system transforms AI from isolated point tools into core operational infrastructure.
Expand learning, skills, culture and opportunity
- The Territorial Delegation of Educational Development, Vocational Training, University, Research and Innovation in Granada, and The Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) of the University of Granada (UGR), and ATENXIA: Enabling professionals to deliver personalized cognitive interventions for children and adolescents with attention and literacy difficulties through closed-loop, AI-supported intervention systems.
Safeguard trusted information and governance
- StandardSecurity and Netsafe: Integrating AI personas in depleting cybercriminal e-mail resources through an adversarial scam disruption platform.
- Quipu: Building an alternative credit-scoring engine with AI to help informal entrepreneurs across Latin America access fair credit by turning everyday business evidence into a clearer picture of income and repayment capacity where traditional credit records are missing.
Build resilient infrastructure communities and supply chain
- TCL Industries Holdings: Leveraging AI-powered 3D loading plans to help home appliance manufacturers optimize shipping containers' load, reduce transport costs, speed up logistics operations and cut carbon emissions from global shipments.
- Shougang Mining Corporation and EACON Mining Technology: Bringing autonomous haulage to open-pit mines - driving safer, smarter, and more sustainable mining operations.
About the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2026
The 17th Annual Meeting of the New Champions will take place from 23 to 25 June 2026 in Dalian, People's Republic of China, under the theme "Innovating at Scale". The meeting will bring together 1,500 cross-sector leaders to explore how innovation and emerging technologies can unlock new growth models and drive positive economic momentum in a fast-shifting global landscape.
