Founded and operated by those with expertise in deep tech from the UC Berkeley ecosystem and beyond, Berkeley SkyDeck is the premier accelerator for hard science and innovation. The organization is a partnership between Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, College of Engineering, and Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. With one of the world’s top academic research institutions at UC Berkeley, SkyDeck has more than 80 advisors and over 15 partners supporting startups with legal, financial, and technical resources. Each company accepted into the SkyDeck’s full cohort are eligible for investment of up to USD 100,000 from the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund.
Last week, SkyDeck Demo Day unveiled more of its core technology and updated investors with recent business and technological innovations.
The following startups are currently in collaboration with SkyDeck. They span a multitude of industries and applications from self-driving vehicle technology, to state-of-the-art medical software, to innovative real estate analytic tools. All seek to cut costs or increase convenience for businesses and consumers.
After six months of advice, support, and tender loving care… Berkeley SkyDeck’s Demo Day kicked off last week.
Deepen AI, Inc. is an autonomous development tooling company. Autonomous driving is hot, and that just means supportive tools / vendors supporting the space are also hot. Their first product solution utilizes advanced deep learning and computer vision AI algorithms to accelerate and simplify high quality labeling of camera, LiDAR and radar data. Typical customers are Autonomous AI vendors, OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, sensor providers and HD mapping companies… and they’re already running at capacity with their early customers.
Starbutter AI makes text and voice chat AI agents that help consumers pick financial products like credit cards and mortgages quickly. Their assistants are the top SEO result and highest-rated agents on Google voice search, making it 5x faster for consumers to pick a product. Voice is an entirely new domain for search, after web and mobile. Starbutter might be the client that owns them all. Their AI chat agent functionality already has 25k MAU and is growing fast on Google voice, Alexa, and Facebook Messenger.
ResultCare is an AI-driven clinical informatics, data analytics, and medical networking platform. Created by physicians and scientists at UCSF, ResultCare has compiled one of the largest clinical databases in the world, and has built a software tool that uses machine learning and NLP to assist physicians in finding the best evidence-based laboratory and diagnostic tests available.
orgo.ai is a staffing optimization software for hospital operating rooms. It supports month-ahead optimal shift assignments and near day-of-surgery staffing level adjustments. By adopting orgo.ai, hospitals can provide significant savings and more predictable schedules for staff.
With millions of new electric vehicles hitting the road, all kinds of new challenges will arise for those responsible for building and managing the infrastructure of such vehicles. ECalCharge is a SaaS analytics platform that brings together data from electric vehicles, power networks, and charging infrastructure to help utilities, fleet owners, and auto manufacturers do exactly that.
Karuna Labs is a VR software company that treats chronic pain using immersive virtual reality technology. Developed by cognitive neuroscientists, physiatrists, and physical therapists, their products rewire chronic pain in patients’ brains to a more pain-free state. This isn’t just theoretical; Karuna has already seen tremendous traction with pain clinics and more, and is expected to publish clinical evidence that strongly supports their position.
DotLab has developed the first-ever non-invasive diagnostic test for endometriosis, a leading cause of infertility and chronic pain that affects 176 million women worldwide. Today, diagnosing the disease requires laparoscopic surgery under general anesthesia, and the average timeframe from symptom onset to diagnosis is ten years. This neglected disease is a hidden drain on women’s success.
Aura is one of the few directly consumer-facing companies in this cohort. It’s a personalized audio streaming service, distributed as an app, that focuses on health & wellness audio content (e.g. guided meditations). Imagine Spotify for this category of content rather than just playing music – and their constant MoM user growth suggests users love exactly what they’be created. Indeed, since launching this year, Aura is used by more than a quarter million people and has been voted as #1 New App by Apple… and all that purely through organic growth, to date.
Large enterprises invest millions every year to make sure they optimize their brands and name their products properly. But what about the thousands of startups popping up every day? Naming Matters is the latest invention by naming expert SB Master, who previously named PayPal, Ariba,Touchstone, Affirm, Westin, Concur, and 60+ products for Apple, among hundreds of others.
How frustrating is it to see a dental emergency turn into a huge bill, just because the dental office didn’t make the right insurance eligibility check? Well, onederful built a real-time eligibility API for the dental industry. Apparently insurance companies already provide electronic data in EDIs, but files are difficult to interpret and integrate. So, onderful converted all of that information into a SaaS platform that aims to serve the 180K dental offices in the US.
Based on over 40 years of research in brain science, Darmiyan has developed a novel image analysis software platform that can monitor and quantify brain tissue health in individuals using brain MRIs. Their revolutionary software tool can aid pharma companies in finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and clinicians in detecting and intervening in the disease EARLY when treatments are feasible.
Last-mile delivery is increasingly a pain point, especially as more and more retail activity moves online. Recently, many companies are starting to focus on this space with shared driver fleets and more. Kiwi builds autonomous robots for food delivery, which isn’t in and of itself isn’t a totally novel idea. But the most interesting thing about what they’re doing? They’re doing *more deliveries with robots per day* than every other company in this industry combined. They’ve designed an elegant, efficient (and cute!) solution that’s already on the streets in multiple cities across the United States, delivering hundreds of orders every day.
Serinus Labs is the world’s first manufacturer of integrated silicon gas sensors. Enabled by cutting-edge nanotechnology, Serinus Labs specializes in providing custom solutions for existing and emerging gas sensor markets such as in industrial health and safety, automotive, consumer electronics, and healthcare.
Deep Neural Networks are the rage in just about every application, with lots of players in the cloud-based world. But what about applications in which you really don’t want (or can’t) stream a ton of data into the cloud? Meet Numericcal. It liberates Deep Learning from the Cloud, by creating a toolkit that allows DL to be done efficiently (conserving power and cost) on the edge, on all kinds of mobile devices.
BioInspira harnesses biology to transform modern industry infrastructure. The company developed low cost and highly accurate interconnected sensor networks for remote and real-time monitoring of air chemicals.
Mekonos is a chip technology company enabling scientists at biotech/pharma companies to deliver drugs into biological cells at higher efficiency and accuracy with less toxicity. They are creating industrial-level scaling of precise injections of payloads into cells to make gene engineering and cell therapy an attainable reality and affordable to mainstream society.
PolyBiomics revolutionizes life science research with its instrument that provides multiple, simultaneous measurements from living biological samples. The result of 10+ years scientific efforts, PolyBiomics’ technology integrates direct information about an evolving sample. Such cutting-edge capability will transform drug discovery in pharma and product development for the clinic and agriculture.
Have you called customer service recently? Most likely, you sat there for 5-10 frustrating minutes as you pressed buttons and got sent down the right phone-tree, before someone finally helps you out. Aybell understands that customer service begins when you get to the person you need. Unfortunately, service agents are hidden by interactive voice recordings. Aybell enables any consumer to connect to the right agent in any company from any app, social media platform, chatbot or browser. Consumers search, click the service they need, and never wait on hold again!
Canopy Analytics is building the apartment operating platform for residents, property managers, and investor groups. They are essentially Google Analytics for multi-family real estate, and help property / investment managers the tools to benchmark their business, cut costs, and direct projects across their portfolio.
