IAG is more than doubling the intake for its startup accelerator, selecting 29 companies for 2025. Now in its ninth year, the increasingly influential list has become an industry bellwether for where airline innovation is heading and what\u2019s worth backing.<\/p>\n
This year, the airline group \u2013 which includes British Airways and Iberia \u2013 is placing its biggest bets on AI and climate tech. The startups are drawn from 11 countries and, for the first time, split into two streams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New for 2025 is a \u201cDiscover\u201d track for early-stage startups, particularly those in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and energy transition tech. These 15 companies will participate in a six-month mentoring program to prepare them for possible future deployment.<\/p>\n
It runs alongside the more commercially focused “Deploy” track, which offers 12-week proofs of concept directly with IAG operating companies.<\/p>\n
The IAGi Accelerator is the group\u2019s flagship innovation program, fast-tracking collaboration with startups across six focus areas including AI, robotics, sustainability, and next-gen computing.<\/p>\n
Speaking exclusively to Skift, Nisha Basson-Mugnier, IAG\u2019s innovation principal, explained the new dual strategy: \u201cWe saw the opportunity to engage with early-stage deep-tech startups in a better way. We\u2019ve worked with these types of companies before in our traditional format, but launched the Discover track to reflect how much activity and innovation we\u2019re now seeing \u2013 especially in the energy transition space.\u201d<\/p>\n
SAF is seen as the most scalable near-term solution to decarbonize long-haul flying \u2013 and regulators in both the EU and UK are beginning to mandate its use. That urgency is pushing airline groups like IAG to engage earlier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IAG is more than doubling the intake for its startup accelerator, selecting 29 companies for 2025. Now in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,5138,733,4308,20873,556,32483,32484,32485,32486,1208,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-60046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-airlines","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-british-airways","13":"tag-climate-change","14":"tag-iag","15":"tag-iag-loyalty","16":"tag-jet-stream","17":"tag-skift-exclusive","18":"tag-startups","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}