EarlyBirds Named Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year 2026 — Third-Time Winner in Global 100 Awards

October 06, 2025 at 14:48 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO, CA October 06, 2025 - PRESSADVANTAGE -

EarlyBirds, the global open innovation and industrial intelligence platform, has been awarded the title of Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year 2026 by the Global 100 Awards. The honor was formally confirmed in late September 2025, marking the third time EarlyBirds has earned this prestigious international recognition, following prior wins in 2023 and 2024. This milestone underscores the company’s consistent impact in accelerating innovation outcomes for both government and enterprise customers through structured engagement with the global innovation ecosystem.

EarlyBirds, based in the Australia, US and UK and operating globally, continues to redefine how large organizations discover and adopt emerging technologies. Through its platform, EarlyBirds now connects nearly 10 innovative companies to early adopter customers every day—bridging the gap between cutting-edge capabilities and real-world missions. These daily engagements fuel capability advancement across critical domains such as defense, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, space, quantum, clean energy, infrastructure, and national resilience.

The Global 100 Awards are internationally recognized for their rigorous selection criteria, focused not only on growth and market presence, but also on strategic outcomes, complexity of execution, and measurable global impact. The 2026 award affirms EarlyBirds’ unique value proposition in a world where the pace of innovation demands faster, more intelligent systems for discovering and operationalizing new capabilities.

Kris Poria, Co-Founder and CEO of EarlyBirds, described the award as a validation of EarlyBirds’ core mission. “Being named the Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year for 2026 is a powerful endorsement of what we stand for,” Poria said. “Our goal has always been to make innovation practical, strategic, and accessible. We help organizations become self-learning and adaptive by embedding innovation into daily decision-making. This award reinforces that our model is working at scale and creating real transformation for those we serve.”

Jeff Penrose, Co-Founder and COO, emphasized the operational impact behind the recognition. “This award isn’t just a trophy on a shelf—it’s proof that open innovation can be a system, not a gamble,” Penrose said. “We’ve created a platform that acts as a near real-time supply chain for innovation. Every day, our customers are engaging with solutions from across the world that are ready now, not five years from now. Whether solving strategic challenges or advancing mission-critical capabilities, EarlyBirds is the partner making it happen.”

EarlyBirds offers a full suite of capabilities for organizations seeking to transform faster. Through its tools—such as Capability Finder, Innovation Projects, Innovation Pipeline, and Ecosystem Maps—customers can identify gaps, scout the global landscape, curate relevant innovators, and adopt technologies aligned to their specific challenges. This systematized process replaces ad hoc scouting and scattered pilot programs with a repeatable, scalable approach to innovation execution.

Unlike traditional models, EarlyBirds is results-oriented. In the past year alone, the platform has facilitated over 3,000 high-quality connections between early adopters and startups, scaleups, or mature tech companies. These introductions—averaging nearly 10 per day—have translated into funded trials, commercial deployments, strategic partnerships, research collaborations, and even investment and acquisition interest. The speed and precision of this process enable EarlyBirds customers to stay ahead of their peers while de-risking their innovation pathways.

This award builds upon a history of recognition for EarlyBirds across the global technology landscape. In addition to its 2023 and 2024 Global 100 wins, the company has previously been named one of the “Top 10 SaaS Companies to Watch” by The Australian Business Journal, recognized as one of the “50 Most Trustworthy Companies of the Year” by The Silicon Review, and honored as the “Most Innovative B2B Collaboration Platform” at the Corporate Excellence Awards. These accolades reflect EarlyBirds’ leadership in reshaping how innovation is delivered, managed, and measured.

Importantly, the platform’s influence goes beyond commercial success. It is actively used by government agencies to support dual-use technology adoption, sovereign capability development, and strategic modernization initiatives. For enterprise customers, the platform supports digital transformation, ESG alignment, emerging risk mitigation, and new product acceleration across industries such as energy, aerospace, infrastructure, manufacturing, and logistics.

EarlyBirds’ impact is also visible in the success of its domain-specific Ecosystem Maps and structured Challenger Programs. Ecosystem Maps allow customers to monitor entire mission-critical domains—such as AI, Quantum, Directed Energy, and Batteries—by tracking innovators, investments, products, research, and insights in real time. The Challenger Program enables organizations to solve defined problems by engaging curated cohorts of innovators in a focused 2–10 week sprint, with tangible outcomes and procurement-ready results. These offerings are helping customers shift from static roadmaps to dynamic, responsive strategies grounded in real-world capability.

As the innovation landscape grows more complex and interconnected, EarlyBirds remains focused on its role as a bridge—connecting the right problems to the right solutions at the right time. Its platform is purpose-built for this moment: when the speed of technology adoption is a competitive differentiator, and when global challenges—from national security to sustainability—require faster, more collaborative innovation models.

EarlyBirds invites organizations around the world to become part of this transformation. Whether you are a large enterprise seeking to future-proof your business, a government agency looking to outpace threats, or an innovator with a disruptive solution ready for market, EarlyBirds offers a pathway to impact, scale, and strategic advantage.

For more information about EarlyBirds and how to join its innovation ecosystem, visit https://earlybirds.io.

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For more information about EarlyBirds, contact the company here:

EarlyBirds
Mr Kris Poria
support@earlybirds.io
EarlyBirds USA Inc., 548 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94104 USA

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EarlyBirds Named Global Open Innovation Platform of the Year 2026 — Third-Time Winner in Global 100 Awards

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