Alibaba.com’s CoCreate Europe judges: Rio Ferdinand, Deborah Meaden and Simon Squibb

Alibaba. com have announced the return of CoCreatePitch 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 19th-20th November 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 start-ups 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 Anguelov, co-founder of French unicorn Aircall and recognized among the top economic changemakers in France under 40. Winning CoCreate Pitch last year has changed the trajectory of my business.

It’s not just about the prize money, it’s about the connections and the platform it gives you to take your business to the next level. The network I built through CoCreate Pitch opened doors I could only have dreamed of, like getting CoolTowel in the hands of professional athletes and celebrities.

The mentorship and practical business advice from Rio over the past nine months have been a gamechanger, and I would encourage anyone with a brilliant product idea to take the leap and enter CoCreate Pitch 2026. There’s nothing like it to scale your business.

– Harrison Nott, CEO & Founder, CoolTowel We are delighted to return to London and hear from some of Europe’s most exciting scale-ups as they pitch to win our significant prize package.

Over the last year, the growth of Harrison’s business has exemplified the added value that CoCreate Pitch can provide entrepreneurs with, particularly when combined with advice and insight from our industry-leading judges, as well as our Alibaba. com and Accio teams. – Kuo Zhang, President, Alibaba.

com 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 October 16, 2026. For more information, please visit the CoCreate Pitch event page. The announcement comes as new data from Alibaba.

com and Small Business Institute Research 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.