Flow Guard Solutions has won the 2026 Hult Prize and its US$1 million grand prize, beating roughly 18,000 teams from more than 220 universities.
The startup was co-founded by Mohammed Ahmed, a graduate of KAUST’s inaugural Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship (TIE) Master’s cohort, and Omar Khalifa, a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Their technology tackles water loss through intelligent monitoring, catching leaks and infrastructure faults early enough to matter.
The path there was long. Flow Guard first won the Hult Prize Saudi Arabia National Competition, established and hosted with support from Monsha’at and Arweqah Alreyadah, who also mentored the team throughout. From there came the Virtual Accelerator alongside 90 ventures worldwide, then selection as one of 21 teams invited to the Global Accelerator at Ashridge House in the UK. Three residential weeks later, only eight teams were chosen to pitch the final judging panel. Flow Guard was one of them, and then the winner.
For TIE, this is the first cohort producing exactly what the program was built for. The 16-month degree takes students from technical discovery to commercial application: identifying market problems, testing technologies, and building the business case, team, and investor readiness to move a venture out of the lab. Flow Guard is proof the model works.
This is a significant milestone for the founders, for TIE, and for the wider KAUST community.