UiPath and GeekWire recognize 21 organizations for breakthrough achievements in AI-powered automation, announced live at FUSION in Las Vegas.
From cutting insurance certificate costs by 80% to slashing customer dispute resolution time from 97 hours to under five, this year’s UiPath AI Breakthrough Award winners show what happens when agentic AI moves from pilot project to production reality.
GeekWire and UiPath today announced the winners of the first AI Breakthrough Awards presented by GeekWire, unveiled live on stage at UiPath FUSION in Las Vegas. The program set out to find the most outstanding implementations of agentic business orchestration and automation, and the results were striking: collectively, this year’s honorees reported more than 800,000 hours saved or reclaimed annually and millions of dollars in ROI.
“I’m so excited to celebrate organizations that are showing what’s possible when AI, automation, and people come together to transform how work gets done,” said Michael Atalla, UiPath’s chief marketing officer. “These achievements are not just technology milestones. They represent business leaders challenging conventional thinking, teams turning ambitious ideas into reality, and employees using innovation to create better outcomes for their customers and their organizations.”
Top honors go to a diverse set of industries. One New Zealand took the top spot. Work that once took the team ten days now takes five to ten minutes, without ripping out any existing systems, generating $2 million in ROI from a single workflow. Close behind, Banco Azteca cut customer dispute resolution from 97 hours to 4.8 hours per case, effectively automating the equivalent of more than 3,300 full-time employees.
Healthcare and financial services were especially well represented:
- Omega Healthcare reduced prior authorization handling time by 75% while lifting first-pass approval rates by up to 20%.
- Coronis Health tripled its daily claims throughput, from 10-12 claims a day to 35-40.
- USI Insurance Services is on track for an estimated $7 million annual cost reduction, roughly 80%, on certificate of insurance issuance.
- United Wholesale Mortgage built an AI agent that cut contract review effort by up to 70%, saving an estimated 1,500 hours a year for its IT governance team.
Manufacturing, retail, and logistics also delivered standout results:
- Beko reduced its invoice allocation team from 15 people to 6.
- Raben Group now runs nearly 560 robotic processes on just 60 unattended robot licenses, saving the equivalent of almost 600 full-time employees a month.
- BJ’s Wholesale Club built automation into its product safety review process, catching risk earlier and freeing its team to focus on members.
- Pegasus Airlines, Türkiye’s leading low-cost carrier, is now validating tens of thousands of invoice line items a month.
Gold Award winners: Omega Healthcare, United Wholesale Mortgage, BJ’s Wholesale Club, USI Insurance Services, Pegasus Airlines, Banco Azteca, Raben Group, Beko, Coronis Health, and One New Zealand.
Silver Award winners: Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, PLDT Smart, McCormick & Company, Continental Resources, and Medline.
Honorable Mentions: AGS Health, Johnson Controls, Endava, Sun Express, IKEA Retail (Ingka Group), and SMU.
“These aren’t projections or pilot programs,” GeekWire co-founder John Cook told the FUSION audience as winners gathered on stage. “They’re real teams, using AI to solve real problems, at scale.”
The AI Breakthrough Awards drew submissions from dozens of companies putting agentic AI to work across industries and geographies, evaluated by an independent panel of judges on efficiency gains, customer impact, employee empowerment, and broader innovation. Congratulations to all of this year’s honorees.
To learn more about the AI Breakthrough Awards and this year’s honorees, visit GeekWire’s AI Breakthrough Awards hub.
