Judging

Judging Rubric

Future Caribbean 2026

Future Caribbean is designed to identify the next generation of category-defining Agentic AI companies. While teams are building solutions within Caribbean opportunity areas, the goal is not simply to solve local problems. The goal is to identify companies capable of building scalable systems, creating durable businesses, and competing globally.

Our judging framework balances business fundamentals with technical excellence.

We believe the strongest companies combine exceptional teams, compelling products, real market demand, and thoughtful use of Agentic AI.

Scoring Framework

For 2026, judging is weighted equally between business strength and Agentic AI excellence.

50%
Business Strength
  • Team Quality
  • Product Innovation, Uniqueness & Defensibility
  • Product-Market Fit
50%
Agentic AI Excellence
  • Quality and effectiveness of the AI system
  • Technical execution
  • Novel use of Agentic AI
  • Efficiency and scalability
  • Potential impact and leverage

The first three categories evaluate the strength of the business. The fourth evaluates how effectively a company is using or enabling Agentic AI.

We are looking for AI systems that are thoughtful, distinctive, efficient and impactful — not simply systems that rely on large amounts of compute.

Evaluation Criteria

1

Team Quality

Judges may consider
  • Founder and team experience
  • Technical capability
  • Domain expertise
  • Ability to execute quickly
  • Clarity of vision
  • Evidence of prior building or entrepreneurial success
  • Team composition and complementary skill sets
2

Product Innovation, Uniqueness & Defensibility

Judges may consider
  • Originality
  • Technical innovation
  • Competitive differentiation
  • Defensibility
  • Proprietary workflows, models or data advantages
  • Potential for long-term market leadership
  • Ability to become a category-defining company
3

Product-Market Fit

Judges may consider
  • Strength of the problem being addressed
  • Market size
  • Customer demand
  • Business model
  • Adoption potential
  • Revenue opportunity
  • Scalability across multiple markets
  • Potential for global deployment
4

Agentic AI Excellence

Judges may consider
  • Sophistication of the AI architecture
  • Use of autonomous or semi-autonomous agents
  • Multi-agent coordination
  • Workflow orchestration
  • Reasoning capability
  • Human-in-the-loop design
  • Efficiency of compute and infrastructure usage
  • Quality of implementation
  • Scalability
  • Real-world impact

AI Categories

Future Caribbean welcomes companies across the full Agentic AI value chain.

Using It

Applications that use Agentic AI to improve outcomes across industries including healthcare, finance, tourism, logistics, climate resilience, education, real estate, manufacturing, transportation and more.

Running It

Infrastructure, chips, networking, orchestration systems, developer tools, frameworks and software that make AI systems faster, more efficient, easier to deploy and more cost-effective to operate.

Feeding It

Innovations in energy generation, energy management, grid optimization, datacenter infrastructure, cooling, sustainability and related technologies that support the growth of AI systems.

Opportunity Tracks

Projects may be submitted into one of the Future Caribbean opportunity tracks:

  • Tourism & Transportation
  • Finance, Payments & MSME Capital
  • Healthcare Systems & Delivery
  • Climate Risk & Disaster Coordination
  • Energy, Climate & Resilience
  • Ocean Systems & Blue Economy
  • Food Systems & Supply Chains
  • AI for the Arts
  • Real Estate & Development
  • Open Track

Final Scoring

Judges score each company from 1–10 in four categories:

CategoryWeight
Team QualityPart of Business Strength
Product Innovation, Uniqueness & DefensibilityPart of Business Strength
Product-Market FitPart of Business Strength
Agentic AI Excellence50%
Business Strength Score = average of Team Quality, Product Innovation, and Product-Market Fit.
Final Score = 50% Business Strength Score + 50% Agentic AI Excellence Score.

The highest-scoring teams will advance to finalist and winner selection.

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