Star-studded judging panel for CoCreate Pitch competition
CoCreate Pitch Europe returns to London as it looks for its next Grand Winner, 12 months on from the success of 16-year-old CoolTowel founder Harrison Nott, who has seen his business grow 10-fold
Alibaba.com announced the return of CoCreate Pitch Europe, its product-based start-up competition spotlighting the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Following the success of last year’s inaugural competition, CoCreate Pitch 2026 will take place in London from 19-20th November 2026 with a star-studded panel of expert judges. Having been a judge in 2025, Rio Ferdinand OBE returns to lead the 2026 panel, which also features business guru Deborah Meaden and social media sensation Simon Squibb.
CoCreate Pitch 2026 is an AI-driven product innovation competition giving startups from across the globe the chance to be named Alibaba.com’s Grand Winner. Prizes come from a $1 million global prize pool shared across the competition’s US and European editions, each with its own Grand Winner.
Last year, 16-year-old Harrison Nott, founder of CoolTowel, was crowned CoCreate Pitch 2025’s Europe Grand Winner. After meeting Harrison, Rio chose to stay involved, providing hands-on mentorship and business advice throughout the year. His continued involvement speaks to the connections CoCreate can spark.
Since winning the competition last year, Harrison has used his $200,000 prize money as fuel for expansion, scaling up operations and building out his support team, including logistics and customer service. Rio also opened doors that would otherwise have been out of reach, connecting Harrison with high-profile international networks and audiences and helping build the brand’s international profile. This combination of funding and mentorship has helped Harrison’s business grow tenfold, and earlier this year, he generated the equivalent of almost two-thirds of his entire annual revenue from the year before in a single day.
As well as Rio, this year’s competition finalists will get to meet Deborah Meaden, one of the UK’s most recognisable business voices, TV personality and serial investor. After a long career in the Leisure Industry, she finally exited her holiday business and became a full-time investor, backing over 50 fast growing and scaling businesses and giving her a breadth of experience and unrivalled understanding of the challenges facing today’s small business owners.
Rio and Deborah will sit alongside entrepreneur, author and social media sensation, Simon Squibb. Simon is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and author of the #1 Sunday Times bestselling book ‘What’s Your Dream?’. With over 22 million social media followers and 2 billion views each year across all his content, Simon has become a leading voice in entrepreneurship. Simon has invested in over 81 companies, including Lovable, Skillstore, and Stan, and has given away over £425,000 to support people chasing their dreams.
The trio will be joined by Jonathan Anguelov4, co-founder of French unicorn Aircall and recognised among the top economic changemakers in France under 40.
This year’s CoCreate Pitch is powered by Accio, which provides entrepreneurs with a pre-configured agentic AI business team that manages the entire SME lifecycle end to end, from market analysis, design, and sourcing to store optimisation and inventory monitoring. And for this year’s competition, a dedicated ‘CoCreate Pitch Agent’ helps applicants transform early product ideas into structured pitch concepts and actionable business plans. Applications for the London event close on 16th October 2026. For more information, please visit the CoCreate Pitch event page.
The announcement comes as new data from Alibaba.com and Small Business Institute Research6 shows that only 5% of small business owners are using agentic AI for supply chain management. It also shows that while only 5% are using agentic AI regularly, 68% of UK entrepreneurs want to find out more about what it can do for their business.
