factorymaker won the Austrian finale of the Startup World Cup on 18 May 2026, taking the ticket to represent Austria at the global finals in Silicon Valley this November.
The Startup World Cup, hosted by Pegasus Tech Ventures, is the largest startup pitch competition in the world, with more than 70 countries taking part each year. The Austrian edition is organised by invest.austria and AustrianStartups, and the 2026 finale formed part of ViennaUP. 170 startups applied in Austria this year. Twelve made it to the finale after four regional pre-events in Linz, Innsbruck, Graz and Vienna. The Austrian winner now goes on to pitch at the global finals in San Francisco on 20 November for a USD 1 million investment from Pegasus Tech Ventures.
We’re honoured by the recognition. It belongs to our co-founders Maria Zahlbruckner and Julia Reisinger, CTO Leonardo Lino, and the entire factorymaker team building the future of industrial facility planning every day.
Congratulations to our fellow finalists: Deepentix and Parlai (Team Vienna); Tagbase, Bioshift and Scopri (Team North); Ainovo Skeleton, Serwas and Stratochaser (Team West); and Combyn Healthcare, Noxavis and Lokistix (Team South). The standard was high and it was good to share the stage.
Thank you to the organisers and partners who made the competition possible, including invest.austria, AustrianStartups, FFG Austrian Research Promotion Agency, Raiffeisen Bank International, EY, Microsoft, the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Wirtschaftsagentur Wien, 42law, Infineon Technologies, MINTED and Austria Wirtschaftsservice. Thank you also to the jury, Scarlett Sieber, Xiaomin Mou, Kenneth Kashif Thomas, Florian Haas, Gregory Gorman and Werner Müller, and to Hannah Wundsam for moderating the evening.
Next stop: San Francisco.
More about the competition: Startup World Cup Austria. Press coverage: Trending Topics; Brutkasten.