Extreme Tech Challenge Announces Category and Special Awards Winners Headed To Global Finals

PALO ALTO, Calif.– Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), the world’s largest startup competition focused on purpose-driven innovation, announced today 10 Category Winners and 2 Special Award Winners selected to compete at the XTC 2022 Global Finals presented by TechCrunch on June 14, 2022. Due to the incredible applicant pool this year, 10 Category Runners Up will also be invited to present their pre-recorded pitch on the Global Finals stage. 

Category finalists competed across 10 fields including Advanced Materials; AgTech & Food; Biotech & Medical Devices; Cleantech, Energy & Environment; Digital Health; EdTech; Enabling Tech; Fintech; Mobility; and Sustainable Smart Cities. 

The Category Winners Include:

• Advanced Materials: Mi Terro creates ocean degradable and home compostable packaging materials made from agricultural waste to replace single-use plastic and paper.

• AgTech & Food: Amai Proteins produces healthy, tasty and affordable proteins for the mass food market. Its first product is a hyper-sweet protein as a zero-calorie, healthy and food-compliant sugar substitute.

• Biotech & Medical Devices: UniFAHS provides customized phage-based products to eliminate serious bacteria causing foodborne illnesses, especially those that are present in livestock and aquaculture. 

• Cleantech, Energy & Environment: reActo offers a sustainable solution for the toughest-to-treat industrial wastewater with Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that is currently incinerated.

• Digital Health: Virtuleap combines neuroscience and virtual reality to help increase attention levels, and address cognitive illnesses, disorders, and learning challenges.

• EdTech: Abwaab, an online learning platform that allows secondary-school students to learn at their own pace, test themselves and get ahead with expert tutors anytime and anywhere.

• Enabling Tech: Incooling builds custom made HPC servers dedicated to achieving the fastest and greenest compute in the world. 

• Fintech: RealKey, an innovative provider of digital mortgage technologies that enable bank and non-bank mortgage loan originators (MLOs) to streamline the mortgage processing experience for borrowers.

• Mobility: AELER Technologies is transforming logistics by bringing advanced technologies to the container and the ecosystem that surrounds it. The UNIT ONE container is stronger, insulated, super smart, green and increases payload.
• Sustainable Smart Cities: Empower.eco generates value out of plastic waste, enabling collectors, recyclers, brands and consumers to make a real impact on the environment.

XTC Special Awards Winners Include:

• Female Founder: Incooling builds custom made HPC servers with their own proprietary 2-phase cooling system that allows for extreme computing increase as well as increased energy efficiency on the cooling and power draw. 
• People’s Choice: Savvie, an all-in-one app helping cafe managers boost profitability, optimize operations and reduce waste via data-driven insights. 

The Category Runners Up Include:

• Advanced Materials: MicroTau prints microscopic patterns inspired by nature to reduce drag and produce properties including anti-fouling, anti-bacterial and hydrophobic effects. 

• AgTech & Food: Nofence, the world’s first commercial virtual fencing solution for livestock, where animals are controlled by GPS-collars and an app. 

• Biotech & Medical Devices: MicroFuse Technologies is a software company that provides expertise in software development, custom programming, artificial intelligence, brand identity and network security solutions. Their focus clientele are: health sector, education, sustainable development.

• Cleantech, Energy & Environment: BeFC offers a sustainable and eco-friendly energy solution for low-power electronics. It produces paper-based biofuel cells to replace conventional miniature batteries found in portable or wearable electronic devices. 

• Digital Health: Virusight Diagnostic, effectively detects pathogens and resolves the current pandemic by enabling access to accurate and ultra rapid testing for COVID-19 anywhere, anytime. 

• EdTech: Kide Science offers an engaging model to break the mold and give teachers the confidence to teach inquiry-based lessons with play and stories to children aged 3-8. 

• Enabling Tech: swIDch brings easy, fast, accurate and secure authentication to every digital identity in daily life, business and even in the off-the-network environment. 

• Fintech: MyTM provides mass transit e-ticketing, branchless banking, microfinance services (loan lead generation through agent network), and financial services.
• Mobility: New Frontier Aerospace, its rocket powered hypersonic aircraft get passengers and urgent cargo anywhere on Earth in 2 hours or less – cleaner than jets. 
• Sustainable Smart Cities: BioElements aims to transform polluting products into environmentally friendly solutions with an ecological alternative to conventional plastic. Quiron Digital develops algorithms for remote monitoring of forest threats such as pests, diseases and wildfires through data from satellites. 

Explore the entire XTC 2022 Global Finalist Cohort.

Competition evaluators narrowed a field of nearly 2,000 applicants from almost 100 countries building tech startups that are working to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ten XTC Category Winners will share the stage at the Global Finals event alongside three Special Award winners including the winners of the Female Founder Award, People’s Choice Award, Web3 Award, and UNICEF EdTech Award.  

Young Sohn, Founding Managing Partner of Walden Catalyst Ventures, Former Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics and Co-Founder of Extreme Tech Challenge says, “I’m thrilled to see another cohort of groundbreaking companies that aim to truly transform their industries for the better. Creativity and innovation are key in paving a more sustainable future and I know that’s what investors are looking for, too. I look forward to showcasing these exceptional startups at the Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals at TechCrunch Sessions: Climate.”

XTC Co-Founder and Legendary Venture Capitalist Bill Tai states, “Building market value these days is about building community, and that’s exactly what Extreme Tech Challenge does for its finalists. The community we have built, that they are now part of, is a fabric of supporters that has proven to help teams grow skills, provide a sounding board of high quality peers and mentors, as well as investors to provide fuel for their journeys.”

About Extreme Tech Challenge

Extreme Tech Challenge is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation whose mission is to empower startups creating new tech innovations to address global challenges. It is the world’s largest ecosystem and competition for purpose-driven technology inspired by the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Extreme Tech Challenge™ competition is supported by leading corporations, venture capital investors, foundations, policymakers, universities and tech conferences to give exceptional startups the potential for global visibility, the opportunity to raise capital, the ability to network with global leaders, and access to world-class mentorship to help them pioneer technological breakthroughs that address our most extreme global challenges. A complete list of XTC partners and how to join can be found at www.extremetechchallenge.org.

Media Contact

Victoria Slivkoff

Extreme Tech Challenge

press@extremetechchallenge.org