Venture Lab hosted its 2026 Startup Challenge, marking the 10th annual installment of the popular competition. The Startup Challenge is Venture Lab’s flagship event, bringing together successful entrepreneurial alumni and Penn student entrepreneurs to showcase the best student-founded ventures across the university. Venture Lab is a partnership of the Wharton School, Penn Engineering, and the Weitzman School of Design.
This year, the Grand Prize winner is Cloak, founded by first-year undergraduates Rishi Ambavanekar, ENG’29, W’29, and Tyler Sacharow, C’29. Cloak works with publishers, ranging from news to novels to screenplays, to protect content against AI scraping. The startup’s algorithm offers either full protection or opt-in monetization of training and inference. For online publishers, this creates a major opportunity to block or monetize AI activity.
Selected from a field of eight finalist teams, including Atelic, OnGov and Paulze, Cloak advanced through a highly competitive process that began with nearly 30 semifinalist ventures. During the final competition, teams pitched live before a panel of distinguished alumni judges and an audience of nearly 200 attendees, competing for more than $200,000 in cash prizes, in-kind support, and additional resources to help accelerate the launch and growth of their ventures.
View the full article, list of all winners, and photo recap here.
By Venture Lab
Posted: May 8, 2026
