Gene Therapy to Clean Energy: The Final Startups at the 2026 Impact Challenge

Hydrogen extraction from wastewater and a novel genetic disease therapy researcher are among the five finalists vying for the 2026 EQT Impact Challenge winner’s title.

The early-stage pitch competition returned to Hong Kong for a second year running, where more than 200 startups participate in the event, where the winner will receive a €500,000 (HK$4.5m) investment from the EQT Foundation, the philanthropic arm founded by partners at EQT during the private equity firm’s IPO in 2019. Winning the event also provides the opportunity to engage with EQT’s global network and resources.

After an initial round of screenings and in-person Jury Day presentations, the long list of applicants has been whittled down to a final five. They now face a public vote followed by pitching at the Grand Finale in front of the jury on September 9. The finalist with the highest number of public votes will be awarded extra points at the Grand Finale.

Winning the event proved a boon for last year’s victor, augmented reality surgical navigation company, Syngular Technology. The firm aims to creates high-fidelity, patient-specific models in under 30 minutes, which are then viewed through a mixed-reality headset by surgeons to improve accuracy on the operating table. This is completely novel to a lot of people, so EQT’s backing helped the firm to convince investors and users, founder Louis Sze recently said.

Syngular also successfully applied for one-to-one matching from the Hong Kong government and so doubled the amount taken home from the EQT Impact Challenge. Moreover, the firm subsequently raised additional investment and pursued new sales opportunities.

Here is a look at the final five

Advent Gene Therapeutics: Reprogramming Gene Delivery with AI

Advent Gene Therapeutics is an AI-for-biology company tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in gene therapy: delivery. The human body contains trillions of cells across many different types and states. Even when we know what genetic material we want to deliver, getting it precisely to the right cells — safely and efficiently — remains extremely difficult.

Advent combines AI models with high-throughput experiments to design better viral vectors.

These engineered adeno-associated viruses act as delivery vehicles, carrying therapeutic genetic material into human cells. Instead of relying on naturally occurring viruses and trial-and-error screening, Advent's platform learns from billions of years of viral evolution alongside experimental data to design new vectors with the desired properties we want.

This matters because more than 7,000 genetic disorders affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, yet only a small fraction have effective treatments. Better delivery could dramatically expand the reach and potential of genetic medicines.

Progress to date

Advent has built a “Lab-in-the-Loop” platform that connects proprietary AI foundation models directly with high-throughput experimental screening. The platform maps the viral protein fitness landscape by continuously learning from large-scale evolutionary and structural data. This includes more than 2 billion protein sequences and 200,000 protein structures spanning thousands of species, alongside laboratory results. The goal is to design novel vectors with improved functional properties.

Advent's lead vectors, ADV-001 and ADV-002, have demonstrated improved targeted delivery in human brain models compared with benchmark vectors, providing early validation that AI-guided design can translate into meaningful biological performance.

The company is supported by the Hong Kong Innovation & Technology Commission's RAISe+ Scheme, which supports the translation of promising R&D outcomes into commercially viable technologies.

C2iTech: Using human cells to target cancerous tumours

C2iTech is a Hong Kong-based biotech spin-out aiming to develop more efficient ways to grow patient-derived cells for the treatment of lung cancer, which is frequently diagnosed too late, and chronic respiratory diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which cause irreversible damage and major clinical burdens.

The company aims to replace less reliable traditional preclinical testing by providing human-relevant predictive models. At present there is a high late-stage drug failure rate and associated toxicity that could be reduced.

One ambition is to help pharmaceutical companies and clinicians to fail bad drugs earlier and identify effective treatments, which should significantly reduce costs and time lost.

Progress to date

C2iTech’s biological engine converts patient tissues, obtained via routine biopsy or a patented non-invasive swab, into healthy and diseased organoids across four distinct lung regions. The firm’s testing platform has successfully isolated a single sensitive option from five non-responsive or resistant treatments when dealing with mutant tumours.

Their platform has also generated functional disease models for conditions like asthma and COPD to support drug screening, steroid response evaluation, and inhalation toxicity testing.

Hydroforge: Distilling hydrogen from seawater

Green technology firm HydroForge develops an Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) hydrogen production system designed for use with seawater and wastewater. The system harnesses waste heat from an electrolyzer to warm input feed water. This aims to generate ultrapure water to steadily sustain hydrogen production without harming marine ecosystems.The process is designed to reduce manufacturing costs by at least 40 percent, increase performance by 20 percent, and targets lowering hydrogen production costs to $1.8/kg by 2030.

Progress to date

The company offers various Hy-Core (PTE electrodes and AEM stacks) and Hy-Sys (a containerized hydrogen plant) solutions that have managed to extract hydrogen from water at lower costs and with greater efficiencies than competitor products. HydroForge holds at least eight pending patents across the U.S. and China and has received backing from regional programs such as the HK Tech300 Seed Fund and the HKSTP Ideation Seed Fund. The firm also won the Golden Award at the 10th Hong Kong Techathon+.

OKOsix: Creating Better Materials for People and the Planet

OKOsix is a deeptech materials platform that develops biopolymers with the aim to replace fossil fuel originating plastics and prevent persistent microplastics. The firm is targeting high-volume industries including personal care, healthcare, and personal protective equipment markets. Early application use cases include surgical masks, isolation gowns, and cosmetic facial masks.

Progress to date

The company has created a biobased, patent-pending green biopolymer designed for high-specification applications. It features performance comparable to traditional plastics but with a reduced lower carbon impact and contains no toxic microplastics.

Their biopolymers fully biodegrade in six months. They have demonstrated biodegradability in both landfill and composting conditions.

OmisHeart Biotechnology: Tackling rare heart disorders

OmisHeart is developing breakthrough non-viral LAMP2 gene replenishment therapies to address autophagy dysfunction, the root cause of Danon disease and cardiac aging. Danon disease is a devastating genetic disorder causing severe cardiomyopathy due to the heart's failure to clear metabolic waste.

Their proprietary multi-modality platform is anchored by advanced microbubble acoustic-targeted delivery. It is designed to reactivate cellular autophagy directly inside cardiac tissue to clear toxic buildup, restore energy, and support tissue repair without the use of traditional viral vectors.

Progress to date

OmisHeart has successfully built a robust, scalable pipeline spanning three complementary non-viral delivery technologies: patent-pending modRNA with precision microbubble delivery, stem-cell-derived exosomes, and bio-engineered hydrogels for long-term cardiac regeneration.

Backed by a clear, defined development pathway spanning cellular proof of concept, in vivo validation, and cGMP scaling, the team is aggressively advancing toward IND-enabling studies and First-In-Human clinical trials by 2027. Beyond the lead Danon program, this versatile platform is being explored for potential applications in broader heart failure, neurological, hepatic, and age-related degenerative diseases.