The Bay Area will be well represented this year during the annual pitch competition at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
SXSW will run from March 10-19 and four local startups were named on Tuesday as finalists at the pitch event taking place March 11-12, which includes 40 startups from around the world.
There are eight categories for the pitches: Artificial Intelligence, Voice and Robotics; Enterprise and Smart Data; Entertainment, Media and Content; Food, Nutrition and Health; Future of Work; Innovative World Technologies; Metaverse and Web3; and Smart Cities, Transportation and Sustainability.
Several of this year's judges will also hail from the Bay Area including:
- Tipatat Chennavasin, general partner and co-founder, The Venture Reality Fund
- Trish Costello, CEO and founder, Portfolia
- Stacy Feld, regional head, Johnson & Johnson Innovation
- Gail Gannon, CEO and foudner, Ensanté
- Arvind Gupta, partner, Mayfield
- Mohanjit Jolly, partner, Iron Pillar
- Mitch Kapor, founding partner, Kapor Capital/Kapor Center
- Katherine Rice, partner, Gingerbread Capital
- Bryan Stolle, managing director, Wildcat Venture Partners
Last year, San Francisco-based Action Face won the pitch competition in the Entertainment, Gaming and Content category. Action Face was founded by former Hasbro and Activision executives, and they have developed software that uses facial scanning technology to make 3D action figures out of anyone.
One of this year's finalists is AudioShake, a company founded in 2020 by CEO Jessica Powell and CTO Luke Miner. They have developed software that can pull apart music into various components called stems so that they can be remixed and used in other ways, including licensing. We profiled the company in 2021, and you can read that story here.
Here are the four Bay Area startups and four alternates that were selected in their respective categories:
Artificial Intelligence, Voice and Robotics
- nSight Surgical (S.F.) — Using machine learning and AI to improve surgical outcomes.
- Metabob, alternate (Santa Clara) — AI-powered developer tools to cut down the amount of time spent on debugging.
Enterprise and Smart Data
- Optery (Walnut Creek) — Software that allows people to automatically opt out of having personal data posted and sold by online data brokers.
Entertainment, Media and Content
- AudioShake (S.F.) — Using AI to pull apart musical tracks so different elements can be more easily remixed, licensed and used in other ways.
Innovative World Technologies
- Staax, alternate (S.F.) — A financial app for peer-to-peer payments via fractional shares of stock.
Metaverse and Web3
- Joyverse, alternate (Santa Clara) — A marketplace for creators in the metaverse.
Smart Cities, Transportation and Sustainability
- Urban Machine (Oakland) — Using AI-powered robots to save and reclaim wood scraps from construction and demolition projects.
- Swyft Cities, alternate (Mountain View) — developing an autonomous "smart gondola" system for large property owners.
