Aryan Saksena, an Indian American student from the Pingry School in New Jersey has won the 2026 High School Entrepreneurship And Artificial Intelligence Pitch Competition conducted by the Stevens School of Business.
More than 100 students created business ideas that integrated AI for the Hoboken, New Jersey-based business school’s second high school competition aimed at empowering students to use the latest technology to create innovative solutions to real-world problems.
Saksena’s top prize winning project, GradeLift, addresses a growing global challenge around the misuse of generative AI in schools, according to a news release.
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Many students use AI tools to produce polished essays quickly, but the result can bypass the learning process and fail to develop stronger writing skills. At the same time, writing independently can feel difficult and time-consuming, leading students to rely on tools that complete the work for them.
GradeLift fills the gap between those two points. It is an AI-powered, rubric-aligned revision coach that analyzes a student’s draft and provides structured feedback aligned with the teacher’s grading standards. Rather than generating new text, GradeLift helps students improve their own work, supporting authorized, integrity-safe use that benefits both students and schools.
“Building GradeLift and pitching it to Stevens made me realize that I genuinely enjoy business,” Aryan said. “Coming up with the idea and actually executing it into something schools and students would pay for was rewarding and fun. The competition showed me that I can pursue this kind of work in a more serious, professional setting in college, and I am now actively interested in doing so.”
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The competition offers high school students an opportunity to showcase their entrepreneurial spirit through artificial intelligence. Each entrant is tasked with creating a two-minute video pitch for their business idea, including the problem it solves, their solution and the role AI plays, a market analysis and the potential business impact.
“This competition challenges high school students with an entrepreneurial spirit to solve real-world problems using AI tools,” said Joelle Saad-Lessler, the Associate Dean of Undergraduates at the School of Business.
Each submission was judged on five criteria: innovation and creativity, application of AI, feasibility, presentation skills and business impact. A panel of judges consisting of Stevens faculty, staff and alumni determined the top three finishers, who won $500, $250 and $100, respectively.