Milan winks at Silicon Valley and is a candidate to become the international home of start-ups thanks to the debut of the acceleration program of Berkeley SkyDeck Europe, a project launched in December by the accelerator of the University of Berkeley, from the Italian innovation hub Cariplo Factory and the international real estate and urban regeneration group Lendlease.
Yesterday, in fact, the first acceleration program in the context of Mind Milano Innovation District, in the former Expo area, ended.
“We are thrilled with Berkeley SkyDeck Europe’s inaugural class of startups and how they represent the massive innovation taking place across Europe,” said Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck, according to which “it was particularly exciting to be able to use the resources of Berkeley University to help support the future of technology in Europe. We look forward to seeing how these companies continue to learn and scale by leveraging the Berkeley SkyDeck ecosystem. “
Enrico Noseda, head of the project for Cariplo Factory, was also particularly satisfied: “The conclusion of this first acceleration path is an important goal and is a first step towards success for all the startups involved, who now have the necessary knowledge to enter the market on their own feet and be potential game-changers in their fields. SkyDeck Europe aims to become the reference hub for startups from all over Europe, effectively reversing the classic paradigm of “brain drain” ».
On the other hand, the nine winning companies were selected six months ago among 571 European start-ups active in different technological sectors. For them, now, there will be an initial loan of 145,000 euros each (for a total of 1.3 million euros invested) and the opportunity to meet international investors and companies potentially interested in commercial collaborations.
Projects include a delivery robot and a chemistry robot, a hydrogen airship drone, an assembly line for artificial intelligence, a solution to streamline the creation of new drugs, and another for shared mobility. .
Here they are in detail.
BiomimX (Italy): it is a technologically advanced Organs-on-Chip (OoC) solution that allows you to find better and safer therapies, allowing you to fill existing gaps in strategic therapeutic areas.
HopShop (Armenia): the “Shazam for fashion”, a mobile app that helps shoppers find and purchase clothes and accessories seen on the web, on social media or even in real life.
HyLight (France): hydrogen airship drone for the collection and analysis of long-range aerial data for the inspection of power lines, gas pipelines, railways.
katakem (Italy): first patented “robot chef” for chemists that allows them to automate manual, repetitive processes and error-prone work.
Quasara (Germany): “artificial intelligence assembly line” which is used by the Computer Vision and NLP teams to be able to industrialize their own machine learning products and services.
Revisior (Ukraine): customer feedback system and NPS (net promoter score, a measure of the probability that customers promote a brand) which contributes to the creation of a positive reputation of the company by improving the quality of service and quickly identifying customer problems.
SWITCH (Italy): DSS (Decision Support System) / DA (Decision Analytics) platform for urban space management that allows cities to make better decisions on shared mobility and shared mobility operators to increase profitability.
THEO (Germany): Europe’s first semi-autonomous delivery robot optimized for cycle lanes and perfectly suited to the new pioneering law on autonomous driving L4 reducing the so-called “last mile” cost of deliveries by up to 80%.
Wave (Italy): patented optical technology for the three-dimensional visualization of content in holographic projection devices such as augmented reality head-up displays (AR HUDs) for automotive and aerospace applications, which allows to broaden the awareness of the surrounding environment, decreasing the distraction and improving user response times.
Confirming how the project is aimed at creating a strong European ecosystem of innovative companies and aims, on the one hand, to assimilate methodologies and best practices for the enhancement of research thanks to the collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, from ‘other, to strengthen the local ecosystem by pooling the skills of universities and local incubators through a model of widespread collaboration
The objective of the SkyDeck Europe acceleration program is, therefore, to accompany the growth of selected startups in the three-year period of activity 2022-2024, also guaranteeing the connection with qualified financial operators able to support the development of entrepreneurial initiatives through investments in equity.
“We have added an important brick to the role of enabler of the research and innovation ecosystems that we have been promoting in Europe and around the world since MIND and this has happened through investment in the startups that have participated in the Skydeck Europe Milan program” comments Andrea Ruckstuhl , Head of Continental Europe at Lendlease.