Top 100 resilience solutions chosen for urban accelerator

The applicant pool also demonstrated significant traction: 78 per cent of applicants had already raised funding, with a median of $558,000 in total capital raised. These figures point to a maturing global pipeline of resilience ventures that are not simply imagining solutions, but actively building, financing, and preparing them for scale.

Lake highlighted, though, that cities face a different challenge with the problem no longer a lack of innovation but the growing difficulty of finding, evaluating, and adopting the right innovation fast enough. Cities are increasingly overwhelmed by the pace and volume of emerging solutions, while many lack the staff capacity, technical expertise, procurement flexibility, or risk tolerance to determine which newer solutions are credible, ready, and right for their community. The public consequence is significant: when cities cannot confidently evaluate innovation, promising solutions stall, climate and infrastructure risks compound, and communities wait longer for tools that could help protect lives, services, budgets, and quality of life.

Leading Cities created AcceliCITY to address this gap. The programme sources solutions globally, evaluates them through expert review, prepares founders for public-sector partnership, and creates trusted pathways for cities to engage with innovations before years of deployment history exist.

“What these companies came to AcceliCITY for is what capital alone cannot buy: the pathway into cities,” said Lake. “The funding matters. The certification matters. But what founders consistently tell us matters most is access – access to the right city official, the right conversation, the right municipal challenge, and the right moment. That is what this programme is engineered to create.”

Assessing resilience solutions

To identify the Top 100, Leading Cities assembled more than 200 expert evaluators drawn from its global network of city leaders, procurement officials, climate scientists, insurers, infrastructure engineers, impact investors, and domain experts across water, energy, mobility, public health, emergency management, and other resilience-related sectors. Companies were assessed on the strength of their innovation, relevance to community needs, public-sector readiness, scalability, potential for impact, and ability to operate within the realities of municipal systems.

The partnership between QBE Insurance and Leading Cities to deliver the QBE AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge reflects a shared commitment to helping communities identify and advance solutions that reduce risk, strengthen preparedness, and improve long-term resilience.

“QBE is proud to support the AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge. Resilience is not an abstract idea – it’s about helping communities prepare, adapt and recover in the face of real and growing risks,” said Chris Castaldo, chief financial officer at QBE North America and QBE AcceliCITY executive sponsor.

“This year’s record-breaking applicant pool shows that innovators around the world are responding to that challenge with urgency and creativity. Through our partnership with Leading Cities, we are helping identify solutions with the potential to strengthen communities, reduce risk, and turn resilience from intention into action.”

“Communities are not short on innovation. They are short on trusted ways to find it, evaluate it, and adopt it with confidence”

The Top 100 companies will now enter a six-month programme built not only around pitching, but also around deployment readiness. Participants will earn tiered Public Project Readiness Certifications, receive mentorship from leaders across government, industry, and investment, and engage with city partners throughout Leading Cities’ global network spanning 16,000-plus cities.

The programme culminates in a virtual Boot Camp and Pitch Event, where the top 10 finalists will compete for a share of $175,000 in equity-free funding, including a $100,000 grand prize designated for a city pilot project.

Since 2018, AcceliCITY alumni have collectively raised more than $3.3bn, created more than 6,000 jobs, and deployed solutions on five continents.

Lake added: “Communities are not short on innovation. They are short on trusted ways to find it, evaluate it, and adopt it with confidence. AcceliCITY helps cities discover solutions they can believe in, helps startups become partners governments can trust, and helps resilience move from ambition to action before communities pay the price for inaction.”

View the full 2026 Top 100 Resilience Solutions and follow their AcceliCITY journey at www.AcceliCITY.com.