StartupFest Europe, a conference taking place in the Netherlands September 25–28, will gather startups, corporates and investors from around the globe. The Innovator has selected a group of the most interesting startups to meet at StartupFest which includes CapitalFest, Impact StartupFest, FinTech Vortex, EnergyFest, Digital Health & Medtech, The Future of High Tech and the Blockchain Summit.
ENVIRONMENT
THE OCEAN CLEANUP
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Aiming to start extracting plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch within the next 12 months, The Ocean Cleanup has developed U-shaped screens that direct floating plastic to a central point. The concentrated plastic can then be extracted and recycled.
ENVIRONMENT
SOUNDENERGY
THE NETHERLANDS
Using a cost-efficient and clean process SoundEnergy claims it can take waste heat and convert it to sound and then into cold air which can be used for industrial waste heat recovery, air conditioning, cold chain shipments and data center cooling.
TRANSPORTATION
HARDT HYPERLOOP
The Netherlands
WHAT IT DOES: Hardt Hyperloop won a competition held by Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop superfast hyperloop transport technology. It is setting up a full-scale testing center and aims to break ground on a commercial hyperloop between Amsterdam and Paris by 2021.
TRANSPORTATION
WINDHORSE
UNITED KINGDOM
WHAT IT DOES: Windhorse has developed a specialist aid drone that can be loaded with food and water, before flying independently to a pre-planned destination. The pre-formed shell can be reused to provide shelter and the frame can be burnt safely to cook food.
windhorse.aero
AMBER MOBILITY
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Amber is developing a modular, autonomous, customizable electric car designed specifically to be shared. ABN Amro has signed on as a launching customer. It plans to have the self-driving cars on the road in Eindhoven by mid-2018.
TRANSPORTATION
FARE PILOT
UNITED KINGDOM
WHAT IT DOES: Fare Pilot uses machine learning to help Uber, Lyft and other taxi drivers find more fares and earn better deals. Its data platform uses historical and live data to identify potential demand hot spots.
ENERGY
SONNEN
GERMANY
WHAT IT DOES: Designed to store and manage energy generated by solar panels mounted on household roofs, the sonnenBatterie claims a minimum lifespan of 10,000 charging-cycles. It is participating in a blockchain distributed energy trial with TenneT and IBM.
https://www.sonnenbatterie.de/en-gb/start
ENERGY
KITE POWER SYSTEMS
UNITED KINGDOM
WHAT TO DOES: KPS is developing a low cost solution to harness energy from the wind. Its system employs two kites flying in the same airspace so that while one is generating power the other is being retracted ensuring energy production is constant.
http://www.kitepowersystems.com/
ENERGY
RAFIKI POWER
GERMANY
WHAT IT DOES: Rafiki Power supplies a containerized solar-powered solution that can bring electricity grid-style services to communities lacking power. To date it has installed and operates eight mini grid solutions in Tanzania.
www.rafikipower.com
ENERGY
GENERAL FUSION
CANADA
WHAT IT DOES: General Fusion is trying to develop the fastest, most practical, and cost-competitive path to fusion power. In its labs just outside Vancouver the company is developing the key components of a fusion power plant.
BLOCKCHAIN
DUTCHCHAIN
The Netherlands
WHAT IT DOES: Dutchchain, the organizer of the world’s largest blockchain hackathon, is developing a programmable money software solution on the blockchain that allows a sender to program the destination into the transaction, ensuring a payment is spent for a specific purpose. It has co-developed such a smart voucher system with the Dutch city of Groningen, allowing government payments to 20,000 citizens with a minimum income to be paid in smart digital vouchers instead of euros.
BLOCKCHAIN
BANCOR
SWITZERLAND
WHAT IT DOES: Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Bancor’s tokens are a type of monetary reserve that provides liquidity to other tokens.
BLOCKCHAIN
PARITY TECHNOLOGIES
UNITED KINGDOM
WHAT IT DOES: A blockchain specialist, Parity develops software solutions for enterprises and industries designed to unlock the full value of decentralized technology. Its Ethereum browser is the first in a series of planned software releases.
parity.io
FINTECH
REVOLUT
UNITED KINGDOM
WHAT IT DOES: By offering free international money transfers and fee-free spending in dozens of currencies via a mobile app, Revolut has gained over 730,000 customers across Europe who have collectively transacted over US$3.2 billion.
revolut.com
E-COMMERCE
MMUZE
ISRAEL
WHAT IT DOES: Mmuze has developed an artificial intelligence platform that can turn product catalogues into smart shopping assistants. The Mmuze chatbot can identify most discussed product features and real-time social trends that impact customers’ purchasing decisions.
E-COMMERCE
PICNIC
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Grocery delivery startup Picnic uses custom built electric vehicles that follow set routes and deliver at set times, as traditional milkmen did. As the vehicles don’t have to crisscross town to deliver at requested times Picnic can deliver groceries for free.
HEALTH
OVIVA
SWITZERLAND
WHAT IT DOES: Oviva uses digital technology to help treat diabetes, obesity and food allergies. It employs virtual clinics and high-frequency follow-up to improve clinical outcomes and lower the cost of delivering care.
HEALTH
SKINVISION
ROMANIA/THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: To detect early and potential signs of chaotic growth (skin cancer), SkinVision has developed an algorithm that can scan an image of a lesion and check for irregularities in color, texture, and shape.
HEALTH
EYEWIRE
USA
WHAT IT DOES: To understand how the brain works, scientists need to figure out how electrical impulses travel through 85 billion neurons, connected through 100 trillion synapses. EyeWire is crowdsourcing the necessary mapping process through an online game.
NEW MATERIALS
ENERKEM
CANADA
WHAT IT DOES: Enerkem’s proprietary technology converts the carbon contained in garbage into a pure synthesis gas (also called syngas),then turnS in into biofuels and chemicals.
NEW MATERIALS
IONIQA
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Ioniqa has developed a magnetic smart materials and separation process, which it says can recycle any kind of PET plastic and produce ‘virgin’ raw materials, similar to those made from crude-oil.
www.ioniqa.com
NEW MATERIALS
PHOTANOL
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Photanol uses engineered cyanobacteria to produce chemicals from CO2 and sunlight. The first compound to market is a lactic acid used to produce a biodegradable plastic.
NEW MATERIALS
MISCQ
THE NETHERLANDS
WHAT IT DOES: Miscq is out to prove that Miscanthus grass can be used to produce cellulose as a replacement for oil-based equivalents. In construction, it can be used as an effective sound and heat insulator. Made into pellets or briquettes it can be burnt as an energy source or used in agriculture in its raw form.
FUTURE TECH/IoT
GUARDHAT
U.S.
Using its open industrial IoT platform, GuArdhat has developed a smart hardhat that supports real-time location tracking, audio and video streaming, as well as gas detection and biometric data capture.
guardhat.com
FUTURE TECH/AI
UNBABEL
PORTUGAL
Unbabel supplements machine translation technology and artificial intelligence with 50,000 bilingual individuals around the world who post-edit the outputs from the automated system.
