Many tech and science undertakings are focusing on new ways to leverage the AI boom. But even within that context, plenty of companies are incubating scientific innovation with a host of applications. Among this year’s World Changing Ideas, these projects are focused on expanding beyond the existing edges of science and tech capabilities.
Some are looking at how to protect against AI’s ability to help supercharge the spread of information, while others are rethinking the complexity of aviation. Some projects are focused on using scientific innovation for everything from a new electric boat model to a fragrance that uses the body’s pH to adjust how it smells on every person. Regardless of the exact application, each of these honorees is doing its part to advance science and technology into new territory.
Winners
Advanced aviation platform, NimblFor “business aviation” operators (that’s private jets and other small planes) who are often running small fleets of planes, things like weather risk assessments, compliance management, and emergency response planning can be daunting. There are more than 23,000 aircraft in the category, most operated by companies without the internal resources to build their own comprehensive safety systems. Nimbl is designed to centralize all these assessments and smooth out complicated factors to make it easier to operate at the safety level of larger, commercial fleets. The company has now processed more than 50,000 risk assessments, helping to ensure more safety in the skies.
Beacon & Shield, Innov8 AIWhen health information starts emerging in online spaces, public health officials can sometimes be slow to find it and correct it until the consequences start showing up in emergency rooms. Innov8AI’s Beacon & Shield is an AI-based program to monitor these conversations and find small signals of changes in sentiment. The system—operating with funding from the National Institutes of Health—generates simple, evidence-based corrections to online rumors and informs health officials so they can begin their own outreach. A case study performed during the 2025 measles surge in the U.S. found that the technology detected signals of suspicion about the measles vaccine 10 times faster than official monitoring channels.
Chimera non-GPS navigation, Advanced NavigationYou may think your GPS is perfectly accurate, but that’s just because you barely notice when it fails. For aviation, space flight, defense, and other industries, the tiniest gap in connectivity can be costly. Chimera is a new system designed to fill those gaps by giving vehicles a hyper-accurate form of laser light vision that continues to perfectly calculate position in the absence of GPS. The company has tested it on planes above the Australian desert and in Europe’s deepest mine, where it outpaced standard GPS in the accuracy of its measurements in 6 kilometers of tunnels hundreds of feet underground. Next up: potential inclusion on the IM-4 lunar mission in 2027.
Digital content authentication, SonicOriginIn the age of AI, it’s incredibly difficult to determine whether a video or podcast clip is real or generated. SonicOrigin has developed a solution: It embeds a patented, inaudible, unique hidden audio signal in files. Even if a file is remixed or transformed, the signal remains intact, letting people verify its authenticity. The technology allows files to contain information about ownership, licensing, and origin, so it can also protect artists from accusations of AI use—any video or audio clip can be traced back to its origin with mathematical certainty.
N30 Pioneer II, NavierElectric car sales are booming around the world, but other modes of transportation are also seeing exciting advances. The N30 Pioneer II is a carbon-fiber all-electric hydrofoil boat that can reach speeds of 30 knots with a range of 75 nautical miles—and charge in just 45 minutes. Navier delivered the first 20 vessels in 2025, adding it to its lineup of hybrid-electric boats. The N30 comes equipped with proprietary control software that keeps the boat stabilized as it floats silently above the water (which also minimizes its disruption to coral and other marine life as it passes over).
Operating system for science, Lila SciencesThe AI Science Factory—a fully autonomous, AI-powered robotic lab—is Lila Sciences’ attempt to harness AI for scientific discovery, automating the scientific process to run hundreds of thousands of experiments. The system generates hypotheses, designs and runs experiments, and learns from results in real time, creating its own corpus of knowledge to help it continue discovery. The company says the system, with $550 million in funding from Nvidia and other AI investors, has already made breakthroughs in finding new catalysts for generating green hydrogen and genetic medicine.
Security for frontier AI, IrregularFrontier AI security lab Irregular works by evaluating the AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind before their public deployment, which helps identify vulnerabilities, possibly pathways for misuse, and other dangers with cutting-edge AI. Because the lab works with multiple labs and government partners, it is working to build more transparency and accountability across the industry and develop best practices for securing AI models. This year, Irregular introduced SOLVE (Scoring Obstacle Levels in Vulnerabilities & Exploits), a framework for quantifying the difficulty and severity of cyber vulnerabilities in AI systems, which is now in use by both the U.K. government and Anthropic.
SkyOS, SkyryseThe cockpit of a commercial plane is full of technology. A smaller plane or a helicopter is a different story, operating with analog controls that haven’t changed much since the 1940s. Skyryse’s new tech, the SkyOS, is designed to be retrofitted onto existing aircraft to make flying them a more automated process, replacing mechanical controls with intelligent, computerized systems. This year, the company worked with Cal Fire, California’s statewide firefighting agency, to add SkyOS to its fleet of Black Hawk helicopters, making airborne efforts to stop wildfires and other conflagrations easier and safer.
Honorable Mentions
AI-resistant digital recordings, Swear
Analog in-memory computing, EnCharge AI
Celestial AI (acquired by Marvell), Marvell
CompactifAI Slim Series, Multiverse Computing
The Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark, Sony AI
Karman Kompressor, Karman Industries
No Fragrance Fragrance, No Makeup Makeup
Explore the full list of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, 191 projects that are making the world more accessible, equitable, and sustainable.
No comments