Back in the day, Mobile World Congress, which we've been covering all week, hosted a side event for startups with the quirky name “Four Years From Now.” The event is now housed within his very own MWC, Borg Starship, which holds an annual startup competition aimed at finding the “best startups” around the world.
Therefore, from among the hundreds of startups that applied and proposed, five finalists were selected by a panel of industry experts and investors after pitching their projects on stage.
Here is a brief introduction to the five finalists from the competition. (Some of them are newer than others, so we don't have all the funding information):
bit sensing
Bit sensing is a radar technology that can detect whether a passenger is inside the vehicle without using a camera. For example, it can detect when a child is accidentally left in a car. It can also detect where a person is sitting in the car. The company is a South Korean company that has raised $21.3 million to date.
Mica AI Medical
Mica AI Medical, trained on “millions” of image scans, says it can diagnose suspicious findings long before breast cancer tumors develop. The platform is designed to overcome the mammography problem where 40% of women have “dense breasts”, which limits the use of regular mammography.
marine ecological structure
Ocean Ecostructures, based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, is a developer of biodiversity restoration programs. It claims to restore marine life to reduce the environmental impact of the “gray sea”. It has raised €1.6 million to date and has four investors including Inclimo Climate Tech Fund and Ship2B Ventures, as well as participating in the 2023 Norsken Accelerator (impact investor) program.
kilimanjaro quantum technology
Qilimanjaro is a full-stack quantum computing (QC) company that develops hardware and software. It focuses on high-quality qubit architectures and “coherent quantum annealers that don't require quantum error correction and can therefore be brought to market faster.” It was founded in 2018 by José Ignacio Latorre, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Barcelona.
Whisps
This “assistive voice technology and calling app” was featured on TechCrunch in January of last year. Converts whispers and voices with vocal cord disorders into natural human voices in real time. Therefore, it could be used by elderly relatives who are difficult to understand, or perhaps by patients after throat surgery. But it could very well turn into his B2B platform for individual corporate phone calls… Based in the Netherlands, he has raised €1.4 million so far.
