Meet the VentureBridge ‘24 startups
June 14, 2024 - Namrata Banerjee
Meet the VentureBridge ‘24 startups!
The CMU VentureBridge (VB) program is excited to announce its investment in 11 startups as a part of the CMU VB ’24 funding cycle. These brilliant CMU-alumni-founders represent the School of Computer Science, Robotics Institute, College of Engineering Material Sciences, Information Networking Institute, Integrated Innovation Institute, College of Fine Arts, and Tepper School of Business.
Aiirify
Vertical: Industry Agnostic, AI and Automation (End User Support)
Location: New York
Founders: Satyajit Naik (CMU Tepper School of Business), Daivik Patel (Rutgers University), and Ben Birnstein (Montgomery College)
Today's IT help desk process is highly manual and inefficient, impacting $150B in lost employee productivity and $67B in IT spend. 74% of employees who experience poor IT support claim to lose motivation at work and over half feel stressed and exhausted. AIIRIFY is an enterprise support platform that leverages chatbot, AI and automation to resolve IT support requests without human intervention in less than 3 minutes (15x faster and at 1/3rd the cost).
Arda
Vertical: Inventory and Order Management Software
Location: New York, Seattle
Founders: Uriel Eisen (CMU School of Design) and Kyle Henson (CMU Tepper School of Business)
Arda is a revolutionary Kanban-based inventory management system designed for businesses seeking simplicity and efficiency in tracking and managing their stock. Arda uses intuitive physical Order Cards paired with a QR-code-powered digital backend to automate reordering, significantly reducing manual data entry and inventory checks. By focusing on strategic reordering rather than exact count tracking, Arda ensures optimal inventory levels, minimizes waste, and saves time enabling businesses to focus on efficiency and growth. Ideal for small and medium enterprises, Arda offers a smarter, faster way to manage inventory with minimal overhead.
Aquatonomy
Vertical: Underwater Robotics / Software and AI
Location: Pittsburgh
Founders: Michael Kaess (CMU Robotics Institute), Xiaoyu Kaess (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Josh Mangelson (CMU Robotics Institute)
We are addressing underwater data gathering for inspection of submerged assets such as dams, locks, bridge pilings, ships, harbors, and offshore energy installations. Currently, underwater inspections are mostly done by divers and sometimes remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). They are expensive, time-consuming, ineffective in low visibility, and dangerous for divers. The data collected is mostly in the format of murky photos and videos, inaccurate for measurement, providing no location information and holistic picture, and impractical for change tracking.
Aquatonomy's solution transforms ROVs into autonomous underwater robots for data collection in any visibility, drastically reducing cost, increasing efficiency, improving safety by carrying out tasks independently in dangerous situations or by providing visibility into the environment for dive planning. Empowered by our localization technology for GPS-denied environments, our solution provides digital 3D models of the underwater assets accurate for measurement, enabling automatic issue detection, change tracking, and providing insights of the state of the underwater assets never available before.
D.Sole
Vertical: Healthcare & IoT
Location: San Francisco, Pittsburgh
Founders - Saisri Akondi (CMU Integrated Innovation Institute), Zilin Zhang (CMU Robotics Institute), and Je-han Yang (CMU Robotics Institute):
In the United States, there are 19 Million diabetic patients who suffer from loss of sensation in their feet. This loss of sensation causes undetected foot ulcers and deformities that ultimately lead to amputations. Insurance companies lose over 15 Billion dollars annually due to wound care, surgeries, and physical therapy associated with diabetic amputations. D.Sole offers a remote patient-monitoring foot insole that provides clinicians with data-driven insights into their patient’s feet so they can intervene at the right time with the right treatments. Our approach reduces foot complications by an estimated 93% and the costs to insurers by an estimated $8 billion annually.
Fixpoint
Vertical: AI
Location: New York
Founders - Dylan Mikus (CMU School of Computer Science) and Jakub Cichon (NYU Computer Science)
When building LLM agent workflows, there are a lot of challenges. The AI needs to remember the previous workflow steps and user interactions. It needs to pick the right models and prompts for each step, and recover gracefully when the workflow fails partway through. Sometimes you need a human-in-the-loop to correct or review parts of the workflow. Fixpoint builds open source infra that makes LLM workflows reliable, so that developers can focus more on their application and less on LLM infra.
Halo
Vertical: AI, e-commerce, marketplace, consumer tech
Location: Seattle
Founders: Anna Fuller (CMU Tepper School of Business)
Shopping online is time-consuming and tedious. Halo is an AI shopping companion that abstracts away all the manual work and puts the right product in front of the right consumer at the right time. In our launch market of new moms, our conversion rate is 10x industry standards and our power customers buy 30 times a year (& growing).
Nomikai
Vertical: AI
Location: San Jose, Hawaii
Founders: Christine Perry (University of Maryland Global Campus Computer Science), Ebru Engwall (Bahcesehir University Turkiye Mathematics and Computer Science) Tom Matta (CMU CIT Materials Science and Engineering, Tepper School of Business)
Nomikai is developing a no-code multi-agent AI platform that provides access to multiple AI models for non-technical users. By automating data access, analysis, and content creation, Nomikai increases productivity for mid-market B2B SaaS GTM teams, replacing the need for additional headcount. Teams will keep returning to the tool for its data and content impact scoring, which tracks campaign reception, lead conversion, and content alignment with company voice guidelines, creating a continuous product use loop.
Reveal AI
Vertical: Applied AI
Location: San Francisco
Founders: Bob Dimicco (CMU Tepper School of Business), Matt Pistone (UC Berkeley Physics).
Consumer opinions and trends move at the speed of social. Buying journeys are increasingly complex. Businesses that can’t pivot fast will forfeit revenue. Leaders risk missing out on vital insights. Traditional surveys and quantitative metrics scale and are fast, but lack nuance. Research interviews go deep, but are expensive and results take weeks. Reveal's AI-powered interviews unlock deep consumer insights at the speed needed to drive business growth.
RoboForce
Vertical: AI Robotics for Decarbonization (Starting: Solar Energy)
Location: San Francisco
Founders: Biao Ma (CMU School of Computer Science)
RoboForce is building the Global Decarbonization Engine with domain-intelligent AI robots to handle tedious, force-demanding, and dangerous tasks that humans shouldn't have to do. Our goal is to address the global labor shortage, with an initial focus on solar energy. RoboForce's AI Robo-Worker is expertly designed to excel in mobility, manipulation, learning, communication, and safety compliance. We are actively seeking decarbonization partners and top AI robotics experts as we emerge from stealth mode.
Vectro
Vertical: Vertical Saas, AI
Location: San Francisco
Founders - Vijeyta Aggarwal (CMU Information Networking Institute)
Vectro’s AI Assistant offers Sales Leaders insights into methodology adherence, objections and trends across the entire sales team using AI Scorecards. Vectro’s AI Assistant offers a bespoke solution serving relevant and timely insights.
Stealth Company
Location: San Francisco
Founders: Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Founders
Congratulations Founders!
VentureBridge, Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship
June 14, 2024
Nomikai's Founders: Christina Perry, Ebru Engwall and Tom Matta
RoboForce Founders: Biao Ma and Team
Vectro Founders: Vijeyta Aggarwal
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
