Technology TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200

14 Fintech, Real Estate, and Proptech Startups to Watch From TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield

Meet 14 fintech, real estate, and proptech Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, from AI fraud detection to construction copilots and commission rebates.

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Graphic showing 14 fintech, real estate, and proptech startups from TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield.
Explore 14 innovative fintech, real estate, and proptech startups from TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield.
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Startup pitch contests tend to spotlight a single winner, but the most useful signal is often the breadth of ideas that make it onto the shortlist. This year’s Disrupt Startup Battlefield selection includes a wave of fintech, real estate, and proptech companies betting that AI, automation, and new business models can remove friction from document verification, investment workflows, construction planning, and even the way homes are bought and sold.

Below is a detailed look at 14 startups spanning fintech, real estate, and proptech that were selected as part of the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort—what each company does and what makes it stand out.

What Startup Battlefield 200 selection signals

Startup Battlefield draws thousands of applications each year. From that pool, TechCrunch narrows the field to 200 “selectees,” and then chooses 20 to compete on the main stage for the Startup Battlefield Cup and a $100,000 cash prize. While the main-stage finalists get the most attention, the broader Startup Battlefield 200 list can be a useful snapshot of where founders see urgent, high-value problems—and how they think software (especially AI) can solve them.

Across fintech and property-focused categories, a few themes jump out:

  • AI moving from add-on to core workflow: Several startups pitch AI not as a feature, but as the central engine for verification, forecasting, optimization, and design.
  • Automation aimed at regulated or high-stakes processes: Fraud detection, tax strategy, banking sales ops, and construction documentation all come with real costs when errors slip through.
  • New access models: Whether it’s fractional finance leadership for startups or studio time priced like a gym membership, companies are experimenting with packaging expertise and infrastructure differently.

Fintech startups

Clox AI

What it does: Clox AI uses AI to spot fraud in digital documents, including tampering and forgery.

Why it’s noteworthy: Document checks remain a major choke point in many finance and lending workflows, especially when teams rely on manual review or fragmented tooling. Clox AI is positioned as a way to automate end-to-end document verification faster, helping companies reduce turnaround time while tightening controls against manipulated paperwork.

Cypher

What it does: Cypher provides cloud-based fractional CFO and accounting services for startups and high-growth tech companies.

Why it’s noteworthy: Startups often need finance operations that look nothing like a typical small business: cap tables, investor updates, runway modeling, and metrics that match how VCs evaluate performance. Cypher differentiates itself from generalist accounting firms by focusing on the numbers and reporting formats that matter most to founders and investors, including cap table management and investor reporting.

Identifee

What it does: Identifee is an AI-powered platform for commercial banks and credit unions that consolidates multiple system functions, including CRM, business intelligence, and sales enablement.

Why it’s noteworthy: Community banks and credit unions frequently end up stitching together expensive, broad tools to approximate a unified workflow. Identifee’s pitch is that it can replace the need to buy and integrate multiple products such as Salesforce, Tableau, and Seismic—potentially reducing cost and complexity while giving bank teams a single platform built around their needs.

Kruncher

What it does: Kruncher uses AI to automate the venture capital and private equity investment pipeline, covering deal screening, due diligence, portfolio monitoring, and reporting.

Why it’s noteworthy: Funds compete on speed and judgment, but the volume of inbound deals and the operational load of diligence can constrain even top teams. Kruncher’s “AI analyst” concept is designed to help investment firms scale decision support and ongoing portfolio work without simply adding headcount.

Lootlock

What it does: Lootlock helps parents manage children’s spending on video games using prepaid debit cards tied to funds earned through chore performance.

Why it’s noteworthy: The product blends financial controls with behavioral incentives. By linking spending power to chore completion, Lootlock frames allowance as something earned, aiming to teach responsibility in a context where kids increasingly spend money digitally.

Muse

What it does: Muse is an AI-powered tax platform that offers automated, personalized tax strategies and financial insights to banks, payroll providers, and other financial institutions.

Why it’s noteworthy: Tax optimization and compliance are notoriously complex and time-consuming, especially at scale. Muse claims its AI can address these challenges substantially faster than humans, positioning the platform as an embedded layer that financial institutions can offer to customers who want tailored guidance without the usual delays.

ti¢ker

What it does: ti¢ker is an AI-powered investment research and trading platform for individuals and active traders, offering real-time stock forecasts, price predictions, and automated trading signals.

Why it’s noteworthy: Sophisticated predictive analytics tools are often marketed to institutional desks first, with retail traders left with simplified versions. ti¢ker claims it can deliver institutional-quality AI tooling to non-professional traders, bringing more advanced research and signal generation into a consumer-facing product.

Real estate and proptech startups

Genia

What it does: Genia applies AI to convert architectural drawings into building code-compliant, physics-validated structural designs.

Why it’s noteworthy: Structural design work can be slow and iterative, with calculations, drafting, and validation often taking significant time. Genia claims it can reduce the time needed to calculate and draft structural design by 10x—an efficiency gain that could matter for firms balancing cost, timelines, and compliance constraints.

Investwise

What it does: Investwise is an AI-driven optimization platform focused on helping data center operators improve hardware performance and cooling efficiency.

Why it’s noteworthy: As computing infrastructure scales, performance and cooling become central cost and reliability factors. Investwise is positioned around making the systems powering future digital services as efficient—and as profitable—as possible, by optimizing operations where energy use and thermal management can heavily influence margins.

Smart Bricks

What it does: Smart Bricks is a Dubai-based, AI-powered real estate investment platform that analyzes residential and commercial properties in the UAE and the United States to help individual investors find high-return opportunities.

Why it’s noteworthy: Real estate investing is information-heavy, and opportunities can be difficult to surface without significant time or specialized knowledge. Smart Bricks says it analyzes millions of data points daily, then highlights only the most valuable properties for clients—aiming to speed up decision-making and reduce the noise that often slows individual investors.

Soundspace Technology

What it does: Soundspace Technology is a technology-enabled music infrastructure startup that offers professional, affordable creative spaces geared toward the “creative middle class.”

Why it’s noteworthy: Traditional studio rentals are often priced hourly, which can make consistent access expensive and unpredictable. Soundspace Technology uses a recurring credit system designed to make studio time feel more like a gym membership—an approach intended to broaden access to professional environments for creators who aren’t major-label backed but still need reliable space and equipment.

Surfaice

What it does: Surfaice is an AI copilot for construction development that helps companies automate design, documentation, and cost projection for repeatable projects.

Why it’s noteworthy: Construction teams often face manual bottlenecks, especially when reusing patterns across similar builds yet still recreating documentation and estimates each time. Surfaice’s focus is on automating those repetitive steps so companies can scale high-volume infrastructure projects faster, with less drag from paperwork and planning cycles.

Unlisted Homes

What it does: Unlisted Homes is an AI-powered “pre-market” platform that creates searchable profiles for every home in the U.S., allowing buyers to join waitlists for properties that are not currently listed for sale.

Why it’s noteworthy: Many buyers want a specific home, street, or neighborhood and are willing to wait—but the traditional search process only activates once a listing goes live. Unlisted Homes includes about 21 million homes tracked via public records, enabling buyers to register interest years before a property hits the market. The company positions this as distinct from Zillow’s “Buy Now” feature by emphasizing breadth of tracked homes and the ability to signal intent ahead of listing timing.

Zown

What it does: Zown is an AI-powered real estate brokerage that says it will return up to 1.5% of the broker’s commission (up to $25,000) to buyers.

Why it’s noteworthy: Commission rebates exist, but they’re commonly delivered at closing—after the buyer has already met cash requirements. Zown’s model is designed to provide rebates before closing, which could help first-time buyers cover down payment needs and increase purchasing power at the point when liquidity matters most.

Why these categories are converging around AI

Fintech and proptech are different markets, but the underlying product strategy is increasingly similar: capture messy, high-stakes workflows and turn them into repeatable software processes. In financial services, that may mean document verification, tax strategy automation, or investor-grade reporting. In real estate and construction, it can look like code-compliant structural design generation, automated documentation, or new discovery tools for off-market inventory.

In both sectors, AI is being positioned as a practical lever—speeding up steps that are expensive when handled manually, while standardizing outputs for teams that need consistency. Whether those claims hold up depends on execution, adoption, and compliance realities, but the Startup Battlefield 200 list highlights where founders believe the biggest process bottlenecks still are.

Conclusion

The 14 startups highlighted here reflect a broader push to automate verification, decision-making, and planning across money and property. From fraud detection and VC workflow automation to construction copilots and pre-market home discovery, each company is targeting a specific friction point with a product shaped around AI-enabled scale.

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Based on reporting originally published by TechCrunch. See the sources section below.

Sources

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