232 Ideas, 10 Winners: Oman's UPGRADE Picks Its AI Startups

On the evening of Wednesday 21 October 2026, Oman's Research and Innovation Authority announced the 10 student projects that will move into incubation under the ninth edition of UPGRADE. The programme exists to turn graduation projects into startups. Six of the 10 winners are built on artificial intelligence, two more rely on Internet of Things (IoT) sensing, and one targets cheque fraud in the banking system. Each team now gets a year of funding, incubation and training to see whether its idea can become a company.

📌 Key Takeaways

• The Research and Innovation Authority named 10 winners from 232 applications and 53 finalists, according to Oman Daily.
• Six winners are in the Emerging Technologies track, three in Water and one in Financial Technologies, as Oman News Agency reported.
• Seven partners signed agreements with the authority at the ceremony: three government bodies, the Central Bank of Oman, National Bank of Oman, Omantel and Nama Water Services. Their support covers funding, incubation, training and financial allocations during a one-year incubation period.
• Applications rose from 202 in the 2025 edition to 232 this year. Finalists rose from 36 to 53, while the number of winners fell from 11 to 10.
• No monetary value for the incentive package has been published.

🎓 What Happened in Muscat

The closing ceremony took place at Tivoli Lavie in Muscat Hills. Oman Daily reported that it was held under the patronage of Muneer bin Ali Al Muneeri, Deputy CEO for Operations at the Oman Investment Authority. The authority received 232 project submissions this year, advanced 53 to the final stage and selected 10 for incubation.

Agreements were signed at the event with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, the SME Development Authority, the Central Bank of Oman, National Bank of Oman, Omantel and Nama Water Services, according to Wahj Al Khaleej. Those agreements give the winning teams funding, incubation and development support, training, and financial allocations over a one-year incubation period.

Balqees bint Saud Al Hinai, acting Director General of Programmes and Capacity Building at the authority, said the initiative lets young Omanis develop their research ideas into ventures, Oman Daily reported.

🤖 The 10 Winning Projects

The full list below comes from the authority's announcement as carried by Oman Daily and Wahj Al Khaleej.

🔍 What stands out

• AI is the default building block. Every winner in the Emerging Technologies track uses AI, from computer vision on factory floors to ECG interpretation.
• The ideas are aimed at Omani operators. Aquaculture, date-palm and crop pests, industrial safety, pumping stations and cheque clearing are all live operational problems in the Sultanate, not abstract consumer apps.
• Partners match the tracks. Oman Observer reported in August that Omantel is the strategic partner for Emerging Technologies, Nama Water Services for Water and National Bank of Oman for FinTech. This gives teams a potential first customer or pilot environment.

📊 How This Year Compares With 2025

The 2025 edition, the programme's eighth, drew 202 registered projects. It advanced 36 to the final stage and honoured 11, according to Al Roya.

Interest is growing but the number of places is not, so this year's cohort was harder to get into. The call opened in late June, as Times of Oman reported. It was open to Omanis and residents enrolled in higher education at diploma level or above, and to graduates within two years of finishing their studies. The authority later extended the deadline to 15 August, according to Oman Observer.

⚠️ What We Still Don't Know

• The money. None of the published reports give a rial figure for the funding or financial allocations, so the size of the bet on each team is unclear.
• Company formation. These are still student projects. The reports do not say whether any team has already registered a commercial entity.
• Outcomes from past cohorts. The authority has not published survival or revenue figures for earlier UPGRADE graduates. That data would show how often an incubation slot turns into a lasting company.
• Regulated pathways. Products such as Cardiognose (medical diagnostics) and ChequeScanner (bank clearing) will need regulatory and institutional sign-off before they can operate at scale. One year is a short runway for that.

🌱 Where This Fits in Oman's Startup Pipeline

UPGRADE sits at the very top of the funnel, before pre-seed money and before accelerators. Its outputs feed the wider pool of young tech companies that has grown quickly over the past year. We tracked that growth in our report on Oman's AI startup count jumping from 22 to 42. For founders who missed this cycle, our roundup of startup programmes open in Oman covers other entry points across the ecosystem.

🇴🇲 Why this matters for Oman

Oman Vision 2040 depends on turning university research into private-sector jobs, and UPGRADE is one of the few programmes that does this directly at the graduation stage. This year's cohort points AI at problems the Sultanate actually has: water scarcity, aquaculture growth, industrial safety, cardiac health and payment fraud. Each team is paired with a partner that runs real infrastructure, from Nama's pumping stations to Omantel's network and National Bank of Oman's clearing operations. That gives these teams a better chance than most student ventures of reaching a real pilot. The test comes in about a year: how many of the 10 become registered companies with paying customers, and whether the authority publishes those results.