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Urbanization is one of the greatest stories of the 21st century, having allowed for better access to healthcare, education and job opportunities. But by 2050, according to the , our cities will house 70% of the world’s population. They already consume 78% of the world’s energy and produce 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. As the need to address climate change gathers pace, existing cities must reinvent themselves.

Meanwhile, new cities are being built around the world – mega-cities in the Saudi desert, floating cities in the Maldives and Malaysia and new capital cities to replace over-congested originals in Indonesia and Egypt. Although they face their own challenges, they have the luxury of being created with sustainability and efficiency in mind, from the ground up.

The race to redesign our cities – from reusing wastewater to rebooting old public transport systems to improving health and quality of life – presents huge opportunities for disruptors to find solutions.

“If we can't win the war on net zero in cities, we can't get to net zero globally, and we need huge innovation in cities for that to happen,” says Rahul Parekh, partner at the venture capital firm 2150, whose focus is finding transformative tech companies that are changing the way that cities are designed, constructed and powered.

Such companies aren’t just potential unicorns but “Giga-corns,” explains Parekh. These companies can “impact cities and urban environments to the extent of gigatons of CO2 emissions and reduction, but also be commercially successful as well.”

We need to think beyond just carbon emissions though, Parekh cautions. “We also need to remember that cities are good for humanity. Urban citizens are, in general, healthier, more prosperous, live longer and are better educated. So we also need to think about how to make cities more resilient, more sustainable and more efficient.”

AI is being used to democratize tech and digitize previously untouched industries. Technologies like aiOla are transforming global communication with their speech recognition tools and helping growing cities to accommodate their diverse workforces.

Amir Haramaty, the company’s founder and CEO, gives the example of a hotel cleaner in the United Kingdom who cannot speak English, but – thanks to AI – is able to use their native language to update room information, receive instructions and identify potential issues.

“Barriers to entry don’t exist. If you can use your phone, you can use the technology. Whatever platform you use, we can connect you. It’s a value-based solution,” says Haramaty.

Language AI company DeepL operates in a similar space. For DeepL, the next frontier is real-time conversation translation. Founder & CEO Jarek Kutylowski cites the example of a live interview being conducted in Polish and French, but with the audience hearing it simultaneously in their language.

“It will change the shape of how we do business,” he says, adding that specialist companies will continue to lead the way in this field. “For hyper-scalers, this will be just one of 100 projects they are considering. They can’t specialize enough.”

Tech behemoths have yet to penetrate public transport systems such as London’s, one of the largest in the world. Yet Optibus has achieved just that.

The Israeli start-up became the first public transport unicorn in 2022, when it was valued at USD 1.3bn, and it now powers mass transport systems in 6,000 cities globally, including London, using its AI-based transportation management software. Moreover, by using eco-friendly alternatives, such as electric buses, it is reducing CO₂ emissions by 11 million tons annually.

Traffic management is one of the last domains yet to undergo a digital transformation" admits NoTraffic’s co-founder and CEO, Tal Kreisler. His company's AI mobility platform is revolutionizing traffic light networks by reducing congestion, lowering emissions, enhancing safety, and enabling a variety of advanced mobility applications in hundreds of cities across North America.

While old infrastructure may be operationally inefficient, the data these systems have amassed holds immense potential. Data intelligence company Kando AI, for example, analyses wastewater data to warn of potential hazards and promote its treatment and reuse.

Health and wellness impact all our lives – and are industries ripe for disruption.

The most innovative solutions often come from nimble start-ups launched in the past five years or so. These companies possess the on-the-ground insight, expertise and hunger to act. Unburdened by the size and inertia of tech giants, they can capitalize on opportunities that escape the notice of these hyper-scalers.

Take syd.life, an AI-driven platform transforming preventive health and life quality by leveraging over 1 million scientific papers and advanced proprietary artificial intelligence. Lorena Puica, CEO and founder of syd.life, emphasizes the value of developing in-house AI systems compared to relying on open-source software. Puica asks us to imagine needing to store a billion data points to be able to give accurate healthcare recommendations for a single person. “So we leverage AI to synthesize that information and tailor it to one individual," she says. Data processing at this scale also enables doctors to make predictions about patients’ future health trajectories and take preventative measures, according to Puica.

Bjorn Thorngren, founder of MEDS, a leading Swedish online pharmacy, sees data-driven pharma as the future. The global pharmaceutical market was estimated to be worth around USD 1.6 trillion at the end of 2023, an increase of more than USD 100bn on 2022 values. In Sweden, Thorngren notes, there are already very few physical pharmacies, no paper prescriptions and 17% of prescribed medicine is sold online (compared with 1-2% in most other countries). While a doctor needs to meet a patient and interpret subjective information, "a pharmacist could be replaceable by AI. So if we feed in all the course material, you will get the right answer every time, and that would be a huge shift in the industry."

As countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines continue to urbanise rapidly, their healthcare systems are unable to keep up. However, innovations from disruptors such as MEDs and syd.life offer the opportunity to “leapfrog physical infrastructure with digital devices, impacting hundreds of millions of lives through the power of technology." says Puica.