Newswise — The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Data Science Institute today announced the seven early-stage companies accepted into the third cohort of the Transform accelerator for data science and AI startups.
Powered by the Polsky Center’s Deep Tech Ventures, Transform provides full-spectrum support for the startups accepted into the accelerator, including access to business and technical training, industry mentorship, venture capital connections, and funding opportunities.
Transform is supported in part by corporate partners McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd and founding venture partner, True Blue Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm investing in early-stage AI companies, founded by Chicago Booth alum Sunil Grover, MBA ‘99.
“Transform is providing the fertile ground necessary to help incubate the next generation of market leaders,” said Grover, who also is a former engineer with nearly two decades of experience helping build companies as an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. “Advancements in deep tech present a unique interdisciplinary opportunity to re-imagine every aspect of the business world. This, I believe, will lead to creation of innovative new businesses that are re-imagined, ground up, to apply the capabilities these new technologies can enable.”
“I am excited to welcome cohort three into Transform, this cycle was particularly competitive and we are delighted with the seven companies we selected,” said Shyama Majumdar, director of Transform. “We have a good mix of healthcare, construction and manufacturing companies represented as we continue to see generative AI startups leading the way, which is reflected in this cohort. After the success of cohort 2, we are ready to run with cohort 3 and help pave their way to success.”
The seven startups that makeup cohort 3 will receive approximately $250,000 in total investment, including $25,000 in funding, credits for Google for Startups, workspace in the Polsky Exchange on Chicago’s South Side, and access to industry mentors, technical advisors and student talent from the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science, Data Science Institute (DSI), and the Chicago Booth School of Business.
“The continued success of Transform startups has been very encouraging,” said David Uminsky, executive director of the Data Science Institute. “The wide range of sectors this new cohort serves demonstrates AI’s increasing impact on business.”
The accelerator launched in Spring 2023 with its inaugural cohort and those startups are already seeing success. Echo Labs, a transcription platform in the previous cohort, has scaled up, hiring software engineers to meet the demand of partnerships with 150 universities to pilot their product. Blackcurrant, an online business-to-business marketplace for buying and selling hydrogen and member of the first cohort, recently was awarded a $250,000 co-investment from the George Shultz Innovation Fund after participating in the program. “The process proved to be immensely valuable as it allowed us to gain firsthand experience of how institutional investors evaluate and invest in seed-stage startups,” said CEO and cofounder Akshay Thakur, MBA ’24.
Transform Cohort 3:
Autonoma: Autonoma engineers use generative AI to help development teams observe and understand any codebase, avoid legacy code generation, and escape vendor lock-in traps. From any source code, Autonoma provides a platform with diagrams, analytics, and technical documentation automatically generated without human effort.
Bettor Vision: Bettor Vision syncs consumers' sports betting, season-long fantasy, and daily fantasy sports accounts on one platform. Bettor Vision also serves as a marketplace for sports betting and daily fantasy platforms, connecting operators to consumers who want to find the best odds and most profitable fantasy contests.
Complete Wellness Solutions: Complete Wellness Solutions delivers complete, configurable, and data-driven population health solutions with its technology and analytics platform. The technology serves as the backbone for wellness program delivery while analytic capabilities enable targeted delivery and impactful health interventions. Complete Wellness Solutions’ holistic approach eliminates the traditional silos constraining other health and wellness companies.
Healee: Healee’s patient experience platform enables independent specialty practices to offer their patients a convenient, differentiated, frictionless digital experience. With Healee’s platform clinicians intuitively describe the desired experiences, digital care protocols, and provider preferences and the unique AI Copilot technology optimizes and automatically deploys an executable system.
iTrials: iTrials is an AI platform transforming clinical trial patient enrollment. It precisely matches patient data to trial criteria, speeding up the process. By automating participant matching and reducing reliance on IT support and recruitment firms, iTrials accelerates drug development using advanced LLMs and knowledge graphs for scalable decision-making.
Leaf Automation: Leaf Automation develops next-generation AI-enhanced CAD plugins that expedite and optimize the design of commercial electrical and mechanical systems. By using Leaf Automation’s plugin, professionals can automate their most laborious design tasks to reduce the time, cost, and strain of engineering complex systems within popular CAD platforms like AutoCAD.
Legman: Legman is an AI-powered data management solution that optimizes sales, general, and administrative (SG&A) activities for industrial, manufacturing, and construction firms. Legman synthesizes vital information with its proprietary AI engine to save teams time, money, and opportunity cost. The customer onboarding process is designed to be as easy as possible with options to connect to organizations through API, not data migration.
About the Data Science Institute
The Data Science Institute (DSI) executes the University of Chicago’s bold, innovative vision of Data Science as a new discipline. DSI seeds research on the interdisciplinary frontiers of this emerging field, forms partnerships with industry, government, and social impact organizations, and supports holistic data science education. The mission of DSI is to address important scientific and societal questions through coordinated advances in applications, models, algorithms, and platforms. Learn more at datascience.uchicago.edu.
About the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation drives venture creation and technology commercialization within the University of Chicago and the surrounding community. Through education, partnerships, and new venture support, the Polsky Center advances the knowledge and practice of entrepreneurship and accelerates science and technology commercialization bringing new ideas and breakthrough research to market. By igniting a spirit of innovation and fostering connections that extend across the University, city, region and world, the Polsky Center enables more ideas to have a meaningful impact on society. Learn more at polsky.uchicago.edu.
###
RSS