From start to finish, the inaugural AZ Inno Madness competition has been extremely close. In the end, however, one contender broke away as the winner.
Humabiologics — a Phoenix-based regenerative medicine startup — won the contest with just under 53% of the votes to take the crown after a championship week of voting in which it was pitted against another Phoenix-based startup, the automated document processing company qBotica.
The voting totaled 14,212, and, just as in earlier rounds, thousands of those votes were cast in the final weekend and into Monday right up until the close just before midnight as companies and their supporters got the word out to vote.
Humabiologics took an early lead at the beginning of the week, at one point pulling ahead with close to 60% of the votes. But voters backing qBotica closed the gap significantly in the final days.
The championship finished off four rounds of competition that started at the beginning of March with 16 contenders facing off after being selected based on reader nominations. Votes are cast based on one question: Who would you invest in? Companies were seeded based on recent fundraising levels.
AZ Inno Madness is a friendly bracket-style contest meant to shine a spotlight on 16 innovative, fast-growing Arizona businesses. Look below for information on all the other competitors that competed in the contest ahead of the championship round, along with links to their websites.
Other competitors
Here are the companies that also competed in the earlier rounds.
Lunewave - Lunewave is based in Tucson and makes antenna and sensor technology.
YellowBird - YellowBird, based in Phoenix, is a health and safety skilled labor and consulting app, matching subject-matter experts with construction, manufacturing and insurance companies
Qwick - Qwick is an on-demand food and beverage staffing platform based in Phoenix.
Mosaic - Mosaic Building Group is a digital general contractor and construction platform based in Phoenix.
TapRoot - TapRoot is a Phoenix company that runs an AI-powered care management software.
Peerlogic - Peerlogic is a Scottsdale startup building a conversational intelligence platform for the dental industry.
EnPower - EnPower is a lithium-ion battery company based in Phoenix.
Forced Physics Data Center Tech - Forced Physics makes server cooling technology in Scottsdale.
Aramid Technologies - Aramid is a documentation automation platform based in Gilbert.
CIRQ+ - CIRQ+ is a Scottsdale company that makes an automated disinfecting platform for commercial properties.
AlgoFace - AlgoFace is a computer vision and AI face detection startup based in Carefree.
SaiOx - SaiOx is a Tucson-based medical device startup building a respiratory assist device.
HUUB - HUUB is a Phoenix-based small business support network that helps entrepreneurs connect with local governments.
GitKraken - GitKraken is a Scottsdale company that makes tools for software developers.
