83 startups ranked this week. Five open free:
Aurelius Systems
@aureliuslasers, counter-drone lasers
Metal Morph, wastewater metal recovery
Remepy, drug plus digital therapy
Centricity WealthTech
@CentricityWT, advisor platform
Erco Energía
@ErcoEnergia, Colombian solar
EarlySignals scores new startups the week they raise, launch, or leave stealth, on a potential score and a scoop score across team, product, traction, market, moat, and capital.
Aurelius Systems, United States. Two founders who ran an NFT tooling startup until early 2024 now run live-fire laser tests with the Army's 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. The turrets weigh under 30kg and track drones autonomously. A $10 million seed in September 2025 was followed by a $40 million Series A in August 2026, co-led by Draper and KAS, alongside a mobile integration partnership with American Rheinmetall. 73 on potential, 72 on scoop.
Metal Morph, United Kingdom. Six water utilities covering 56 percent of the UK market have signed agreements, and no full-scale plant has run yet. The company pulls aluminium and iron coagulants back out of wastewater using Donnan dialysis in container-sized modules, validated so far at a Cranfield University pilot. Funding is a 700,000 pound pre-seed plus a 100,000 pound Ofwat innovation grant. 88 on scoop, the highest of the five firms we opened, and 68 on potential, held down by traction that is still contracts rather than plants.
Remepy, Israel. A 41-patient Parkinson's Phase IIa trial moved motor scores 9.7 points on the MDS-UPDRS scale against 1.95 points for levodopa alone, published in Brain Communications this year. Remepy builds prescription digital protocols designed to work alongside existing drugs. Merck KGaA's M Ventures led a $36 million Series A in August 2026, taking total funding to $62 million. There are no named customers and no revenue, which is where a company sits before Phase III. 73 on potential, 78 on scoop.
Centricity WealthTech, India. Former private bankers from IIFL Wealth, Citibank, and Kotak run an open platform connecting independent financial advisors to 80 to 85 alternate asset managers, manufacturing none of the products itself. It now carries 20,000 partners and roughly 15,000 to 16,000 crore rupees in assets, up from 4,500 distributors and 4,500 crore at seed. SMBC's Asia Rising Fund led a 280 crore rupee Series A in August 2026. 80 on potential, the highest of the five, and 72 on scoop.
Erco Energía, Colombia. Two mechanical engineering graduates from EAFIT turned their 2012 capstone project into a distributed solar developer with more than 320 MWp installed or in progress, including a 26.4 MW plant dispatched in August 2025 and a 14.96 MWp site carrying 4.5 MWh of storage. Norfund, CFM, and Axon backed a $129 million Series C in August 2026, one of the largest local equity rounds in Colombia. 79 on potential, 82 on scoop.
78 more firms sit behind the subscriber wall in the August 17 issue: 16 in Europe, 13 in Canada, 13 across Israel and the Middle East, 10 in Asia-Pacific, 9 in Africa, 9 in the United States, and 7 in Latin America.
Research notes, not investment advice.