On a rooftop in New York City, surrounded by leading investors from across the tech industry, an Indian deep tech startup walked away with first place.

Neural Defend (Techstars 2025), a company building proprietary AI detection technology, won the startup award at NYC Tech Week, an event organized by a16z. As the only Indian startup among 10 global finalists, Neural Defend took home approximately $50,000 in equity-free prize money and a moment that signals something bigger than any single competition.

Who Is Neural Defend?

Neural Defend was founded by Piyush Verma, who left a research role at MIT to build a startup with a clear thesis: Indian founders can create original technology that competes on the world's biggest stages. The company is developing a proprietary AI detection foundation model — not a wrapper built on someone else's API, but an architecture built from first principles for accuracy and speed. The underlying technology is patent-pending.

Piyush, Siva Shankar, and Sumit Singh are tackling a real and growing challenge: as AI-generated content spreads, the ability to detect and defend against it matters more to businesses, governments, and individuals every day.

Everything AI Startup Pitch Competition

Fundraising Bootcamp brought together some of the most promising AI startups and ecosystem leaders for its Everything AI Startup Pitch Competition during NYC Tech Week. The judges included leaders from AWS, OpenAI, IBM, Amazon, and more.

Business Insider covered the competition.

Why We're Proud

At Techstars, we've always believed that the best ideas can come from anywhere. Neural Defend embodies that belief. Piyush and his team didn't take the easy path. They did original research, built from first principles, and created technology capable of competing against the best in the world.

That's the kind of ambition we back.

Congratulations to Piyush, Siva, and Sumit!

Learn more at neuraldefend.com.

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