WEF announces new MINDS cohort amid AI surge

• The World Economic Forum has announced the third group of its MINDS program, which will involve 26 organizations from 12 sectors in 28 countries.
• Selected organizations are leveraging AI to develop solutions that have a scalable and measurable impact on industries and people, including energy, scientific discovery, and healthcare.
• As global investment in AI and emerging technologies increases, this cohort is demonstrating how innovation can address pressing business and societal challenges.
• Learn more about the new MINDS below and here. Click here to learn more about the 2026 New Champions Annual Meeting. Follow us on social media using #amnc26, #2026summer达IO斯#, and #InnovateScaleImpact

Geneva, Switzerland, June 2, 2026 – Ahead of the 2026 New Champions Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum today announced the third group of its MINDS program, which recognizes organizations leveraging AI and frontier technologies to tackle complex global challenges. Selected from hundreds of applicants, 26 pioneers are implementing new technologies to deliver scalable business and social impact.

“In combination with other technologies, AI is reshaping every aspect of how businesses operate and societies function,” said Stefan Mergenthaler, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of the World Economic Forum. “The MINDS program exists to ensure that 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) program identifies and introduces artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that can be meaningfully and responsibly deployed at scale. Organizations are selected through a structured evaluation process that includes review by an independent International Impact Council of senior executives and subject matter experts who evaluate applications based on innovation, impact, and replicability.

“There is no end to AI ambition, but translating that ambition into real-world deployments remains a key challenge,” said Kathie Lee, director of the World Economic Forum’s Center for AI Excellence. “MINDS highlights organizations that have moved beyond experimentation to implementation, showcasing solutions to common challenges that can be adapted and applied around the world.”

The new MINDS cohort reflects the growing use of AI to address global challenges. From the third group onwards, winners will be grouped into six impact areas. Building sustainable planet, energy and food systems. Build healthier lives with better medical care. Expand your learning, skills, culture and opportunities. Protect trusted information and governance. Build resilient infrastructure and supply chains.

Applications for the next cohort are currently being accepted. Organizations that incorporate AI to drive strategic decision-making and create meaningful value for business and society, supported by strong governance and responsible practices, can apply through the MINDS website. The next cohort will be announced at the 2027 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

The 2026 MINDS organization is driving AI-driven solutions across the following areas:

Accelerating growth through productivity and innovation

• Valterra Platinum and Dunia Innovation: Transforming catalyst discovery through self-driving labs where AI designs experiments, robots run them, and results continuously inform the next test, accelerating the path from material hypothesis to validated industrial solutions while reducing dependence on expensive and unstable materials.
• Molecular Universe Pte. Ltd. (SES AI Corp.): Builds an agent AI-driven platform to accelerate 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 conditioning factories using AI end-to-end to design production processes faster, guide flexible assembly, automatically inspect products, and help teams resolve factory issues before they happen again.
• KUKA and Mech-Mind Robotics technology: Integrates robot intelligence and 3D vision to build robots using physical AI, turning standard arms into general-purpose intelligent systems without custom fixtures or reprogramming.
• Xuchang Pang Donlai Trade Group Co., Ltd. and Mettler Toledo (Changzhou) Measurement Technology Ltd.: Leverage a single AI platform across retail operations to eliminate manual processes, reduce waste, and accelerate service to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Building a sustainable planet, energy and food system

• Bota Biosciences: Automates biological discovery and production in synthetic biology by combining physical AI with Biology Protocol Language, a new 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: Help grid operators prevent dangerous overloads of critical power lines by using reinforcement learning agents to transform live grid data, weather forecasts, and safety checks into human-reviewed power distribution recommendations within minutes
• TW SOLAR: Use AI-powered traceability and real-time anomaly detection to help solar panel manufacturers identify defects in solar cell manufacturing within minutes instead of days, increasing manufacturing yields, reducing waste, and increasing clean energy output.
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Lenovo: Build an AI-driven orchestration system that continuously optimizes enterprise, AI, and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads along with cloud and data center infrastructure, transforming energy into schedulable resources for next-generation computing.
• Occidental: Uses AI to provide geologists and engineers with a faster, more consistent picture of underground oil and gas reservoirs before they start work, helping to inform drilling decisions as well as improve labor and cost efficiency.

Build a healthier life with better health care

• SBP Group: Builds a managed, enterprise-wide AI operating model for pharmaceutical operations by incorporating specialized AI agents into critical workflows, from clinical trials and medical affairs to commercial operations and corporate reviews. The system transforms AI from a lone point tool into a core operational infrastructure by connecting fragmented data, rules, and workflows.

Expand your learning, skills, culture and opportunities

• Granada’s Regional Delegation for Educational Development, Vocational Training, Universities, Research and Innovation, the Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior Research (CIMCYC) of the University of Granada (UGR), and ATENXIA: enable experts to deliver personalized cognitive interventions to children and adolescents with attention and literacy difficulties through a closed-loop AI-assisted intervention system.

Protect trusted information and governance

• StandardSecurity and Netsafe: Integrate AI personas into depleting cybercrime email resources through our adversarial fraud prevention platform.
• Quipu: We build an AI-powered alternative credit scoring engine to help informal entrepreneurs across Latin America access fair credit by transforming everyday business evidence into a clearer picture of income and ability to repay, even when traditional credit records are lacking.

Building resilient infrastructure communities and supply chains

• TCL Industries Holdings: Leverages AI-powered 3D load planning to help consumer electronics manufacturers optimize shipping container loads, reduce transportation costs, speed up logistics operations, and reduce carbon emissions from global transportation.
• Shougang Mining Corporation and EACON Mining Technology: Bringing automated transportation to open-pit mines, driving safer, smarter, and more sustainable mine operations.

About the 2026 New Champions Annual Meeting

The 17th Annual Meeting of New Champions will be held from June 23 to 25, 2026 in Dalian, People’s Republic of China, with the theme “Innovation at Scale”. The conference brings together 1,500 leaders across sectors to explore how innovation and emerging technologies can unlock new growth models and drive positive economic momentum in a rapidly changing global landscape.