Styria Innovation Award

Ideas That Shape the Future

Amid glorious spring weather, the award ceremony for the Styria Innovation Award 2026 took place on April 8 at the Schlossberghotel in Graz. From a large number of excellent submissions, the expert jury once again selected six outstanding projects in the categories of sustainability and digitalization.

Willibald Ehrenhöfer, State Councilor for Economic Affairs and Research, and Christoph Ludwig, Managing Director of the SFG, invited the winners to the awards ceremony.

The honored companies and research institutions impressively demonstrate just how much innovative spirit, courage, and creative drive Styria has to offer. The event provided an inspiring platform for exchange, new ideas, and strong networking—and highlighted how actively the future is already being shaped today.

In 2026, the SFG will once again recommend five projects for the nationwide State Prize for Innovation in the fall, an award at which Styria has been successfully represented on multiple occasions in the past.

The winning projects of the 2026 Styria Innovation Prize are:

Digitalization: Micro and Small Businesses

arterioscope FlexCo

arterioscope.AI-ECG is a cloud-based medtech software that uses AI to derive noninvasive cardiovascular biomarkers from a standard 12-lead ECG. This makes the early detection and monitoring of heart failure in everyday clinical practice faster, more affordable, and more widely available.

Digitalization: Medium-Sized and Large Companies

Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG

AT&S has developed a process for embedding semiconductor devices in power electronics, enabling the construction of ultra-compact power supply modules for high-performance data centers. This allows AI applications and other computationally intensive tasks to be executed faster and more efficiently.

Digitalization: R&D Institutions

Leoben University of Mining and Technology – Chair of Waste Recovery Technology and Waste Management

The Digital Waste Research Lab (DWRL) is a novel, modular, large-scale research infrastructure for digital waste analysis and treatment that combines the circular economy and digitalization to capture material and waste streams as well as environmental processes in real time and integrate them into an intelligent ecosystem. The facility serves as an innovation hub and driver for projects by numerous Austrian technology companies and research institutions, forming a flexible research infrastructure network for the development of digital solutions to waste management challenges.

Sustainability: Micro- and Small Businesses

Ecolyte GmbH

In the EIC Pathfinder project VanillaFlow (2023–2026), a multidisciplinary team from three countries is working on the AI-driven development of stationary, sustainable, and scalable energy storage systems. In this project, all components (membranes, redox-active molecules, electrodes) as well as the battery’s internal control system are being researched and optimized using AI. The goal is to replace critical raw materials and reduce geopolitical dependencies. Ecolyte GmbH is entering the race with a groundbreaking paper membrane technology.

Sustainability: Medium-Sized and Large Companies

GIG Karasek GmbH

With its innovative CompriVAP system, GIG Karasek is implementing the world’s most powerful industrial heat pump at BASF, which converts waste heat from a steam cracker into up to 50 MW of CO₂-free process steam, thereby reducing emissions by approximately 100,000 metric tons annually. This flagship project demonstrates how industrial waste heat can be transformed into a valuable energy source through innovative open heat pump technology, thereby significantly advancing the decarbonization of energy-intensive industries.

Sustainability: R&D Institutions

Polymer Competence Center Leoben GmbH

The submitted project marks the first successful commercial-scale production of recyclable, fiber-reinforced, polymer-based composite materials for the aerospace industry.