Cardano Accelerator Program Announces Fall 2026 Cohort

The Venture Hub supports Cardano adoption through connected pathways spanning venture acceleration, ongoing venture support, enterprise enablement, strategic partnerships, and investment networks.

As a key program within the Venture Hub, the Cardano Accelerator Program (CAP) identifies and accelerates ventures with the potential to build commercially viable products and drive adoption on Cardano. For selected participants, the journey may continue beyond the cohort through tailored venture support, enterprise opportunities through the Enterprise Enablement Program (EEP), and introductions to strategic partners and external investors.

A curated experience built around two tracks

The CAP keeps its cohorts niche, so every selected venture receives focused, high-touch support as it builds visibility and traction within the Cardano ecosystem. For Fall 2026, the program runs two parallel tracks suited to where each venture stands:

• Core: offering a full business and technical curriculum that accelerates ventures building on Cardano toward product-market fit and investment readiness.
• Spotlight: a business development and marketing-focused track that sharpens a venture's messaging and connects it with enterprises and investors.

Ventures in the Core track work through tailored technical sessions, go-to-market guidance, regulatory workshops, and strategic advisory designed to move their products toward long-term scalability. Ventures in the Spotlight track focus more time on refining
their positioning and building the relationships that open enterprise and investment opportunities.

The program includes an in-person kick-off week and closes with a Demo Day in the first week of February 2027, where founders will present to a curated network of investors and ecosystem partners. Each participating team receives a CHF 10,000 contribution to support the delivery of defined adoption milestones, alongside guidance from the Foundation and its ecosystem and industry collaborators.

Together, the two tracks allow the Venture Hub to support projects at different stages while maintaining a clear focus on commercially relevant use cases and measurable adoption on Cardano.

Verifying real-world origins and data on Cardano

This cohort is built around a single question: how does a claim about a product, a dataset, or a record hold up as true? Across industries, proving where something came from, whether a dataset stayed intact, and whether a record is authentic has moved from a nice-to-have into a commercial and regulatory requirement. The Fall 2026 ventures are building the infrastructure that makes this kind of verification possible on Cardano, spanning:

• digital product passports (DPPs), which track a product across its lifecycle as the EU advances requirements for more transparent and verifiable product information;
• verified identity, which proves who is who;
• traceability, which establishes where things come from;
• and responsible AI and oracles, which connect trustworthy data to real-world systems.

Following a competitive selection process, the Foundation has selected two groups of finalists for the Fall 2026 cohort—five ventures joining the Core track and three joining the Spotlight track. Together, they show how verification, provenance, and trustworthy data can be built directly into Cardano's infrastructure.

Core track participants

Embeddo makes vehicle emissions verifiable through DecarboChain, edge AI that measures CO2 where it is produced and anchors authenticated records on Cardano so fleets, regulators, and carbon markets can trust the number.

Boomtag built BooomConnect, a platform that gives every physical product a blockchain-based Digital Product Passport, unlocked through a factory-integrated NFC or QR tag built into the product itself. It delivers a familiar Web2 experience while helping leading brands meet EU sustainability rules and build direct, lasting relationships with the people who own their products.

VitaLedger helps families choose safer, healthier food. Its AI reads the label, checks the evidence, and answers in seconds. Cardano makes that evidence independently verifiable and easy to trust.

Forg3t Protocol is building the infrastructure for AI to forget, giving companies a way to unlearn specific information, test the result, and prove what happened.

Adreva is building the user-owned profile layer for personalized commerce. Its privacy-first browser extension matches relevant ads locally on each device, so brands reach high-intent consumers without accessing personal data, and users are rewarded for the value their attention creates.

Spotlight track participants

Palmyra provides end-to-end supply chain traceability, supporting transparency, regulatory compliance, and trust in global commodity markets.

Open Food Chain turns compliance into revenue. It transforms traceability, certificates, and supplier data into scannable product passports, with every claim linked to its evidence and review status, anchored on Cardano's public infrastructure.

AgrowLabs built CropConnect, a track-and-trace infrastructure for regulated agricultural supply chains. Every batch, transfer, and sale is cryptographically signed and replayable, so regulators can verify the chain of custody without relying on a third party.

Each finalist reflects a distinct piece of the same challenge: making a claim about origin, identity, or data verifiable in a way that holds up to outside scrutiny. This aligns with the Foundation's broader focus on strengthening Cardano's role as a trusted public digital infrastructure. Cardano remains open and permissionless, belonging to no single party; the Foundation stewards the network and advocates for its use rather than owning or controlling it.

Building toward the next cohort

As CAP's third cohort, Fall 2026 builds on the lessons of the two cohorts that came before it and reinforces the Foundation's ongoing commitment to supporting commercially viable, compliance-ready ventures within the Cardano ecosystem.

By bringing together ventures working on product passports, identity, traceability, and responsible AI, this cohort advances a shared goal, making verifiable trust a practical, working feature of the Cardano ecosystem. The Foundation looks forward to working closely with both tracks as they refine their products, sharpen their positioning, and prepare for Demo Day.

The Foundation encourages all ventures building on Cardano to apply and join a program designed to accelerate both technical excellence and market readiness.

Funding, investment, and/or financial contributions are not guaranteed; program terms and conditions apply. Please get in touch with any questions.