Announcements keep coming out of Austin ahead of the city's annual SXSW festival and on Thursday 12 Bay Area companies were named as finalists across 11 out of 13 categories for this year's innovation awards. More than five dozen companies from around the world will be considered for these awards.
The festival runs from March 11-18, and the innovation awards ceremony will be held in-person on March 14.
A Hall of Fame award will also be presented then, honoring "trendsetters whose career accomplishments have paved the future of the new media industry," according to the website. Previous Hall of Fame honorees include Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant, Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, former MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito and Web Standards Project co-founder Jeffrey Zeldman.
Here are the finalists in each category from around the Bay Area.
AI & Machine Learning
- Forager A.I. by Brightseed (San Francisco)
Health, Med & BioTech
- Q Bio Gemini and QBio Mark I (San Carlos)
Music & Audio Innovation
- Spatial Studio: Immersive Sound Design (Emeryville)
Robotics & Hardware
- Vulcan, Bulletproof Precision Weeding (San Francisco)
Smart Cities, Transportation & Delivery
- Intelligent Infrastructure Solution (San Jose)
- Low Light Energy Harvesting Solar Cells (Mill Valley)
Social & Cultural Impact
- Arist: Message-Based Learning (San Francisco)
Speculative Design
- Biometric Ignited mobile self-defense (Pleasanton)
Student
- Arist: Message-Based Learning (San Francisco)
Visual Media Experience
- Color of Change | Pedestal Project (Oakland)
VR, AR & MR
- Color of Change | Pedestal Project (Oakland)
- Osso VR Expands to New Specialties (San Francisco)
Wearable Tech
- FreeStyle Libre 3 System (Alameda)
- Smell Revived (Berkeley)
