Nebius distributed $1.4 million in compute and inference credits to healthcare and life sciences startups at its AI Discovery Awards, adding medical devices and imaging to the competition. The inclusion of these categories reflects the shift of artificial intelligence from back-office research into direct clinical diagnostics and connected medical equipment.
New categories and recognized winners
The 2026 program added Medical Devices and Medical Imaging to existing tracks for biopharma, genomics, and digital health. An independent panel of 28 judges selected category winners from 647 global applications based on technical merit, compute usage, and market potential.
First-place winners received $100,000 in compute and inference credits. Second and third-place teams received $50,000 and $30,000, respectively. The top finishers in each category are:
- Biopharma: Phylo, Virgo, Decoy Therapeutics
- Digital Health: Corti.ai, VitVio, EverEx
- Genomics: Omniscope, Twig Bio, DELFI Diagnostics
- Medical Devices: Real Time Imaging Systems, BAIBYS™Fertility, Fluent
- Medical Imaging: Nucleo Research, Subtle Medical, Hertility Health
Nebius also introduced Regional Trailblazer awards, granting $30,000 in compute credits to five companies advancing healthcare AI in Africa, APAC, EMEA, Latin America, and North America.
Purpose-built cloud infrastructure
Alongside the awards, Nebius previewed its Scientific AI and Healthcare Platform. The company built this cloud infrastructure specifically for healthcare and life sciences organizations.
The infrastructure supports teams focused on AI for Science & Research and clinical applications by addressing two primary use cases. Private model hosting allows biotech and pharmaceutical organizations to run proprietary models without the overhead of dedicated GPUs.
A "Bring your Own Job" feature supports the custom, reproducible scientific workflows that researchers prefer over standard inference endpoints. Clinical leaders evaluating AI for Healthcare implementations will find the platform designed to handle inference-intensive workloads directly within diagnostic imaging and connected equipment.
Accelerating clinical timelines
Dr. Ilya Burkov, Global Head of Healthcare & Life Sciences at Nebius, said the 647 submissions highlight how the technology is compressing research timelines. "Across all categories, startups 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," Burkov said.
The awards program connects these teams with the compute resources, investor networks, and mentorship required to move from research to market. A full list of shortlisted companies and qualification criteria is available on the Nebius website.
Why this matters for healthcare professionals
The addition of medical devices and medical imaging signals a shift in where AI is being deployed. Clinical leaders must now evaluate how inference-heavy AI tools will integrate with existing hospital equipment and diagnostic workflows, rather than treating AI solely as a back-office research tool.
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