2018 Swisscom Start-Up Challenge reveals its winners

15.08.2018 08:00, Charlotte Pichon

Out of more than 200 applicants these 5 high-tech startups made it this far, convincing the jury with their work in artificial intelligence, ICT/cloud based services, fintech, imagery compression, cybersecurity and robotics. Congratulations to AAAccell, Dotphoton, ExeonAnalytics, Rovenso and Sentifi! The program will reward their global ambitions with an incredible journey into Silicon Valley entrepreneurship ecosystem in October of this year.

The Swisscom StartUp Challenge, in partnership with Venturelab, offers a unique business acceleration program in Silicon Valley to Swiss high-tech startups in early and development phase seeking international expansion. Since its launch in 2013, over 852 startups have applied to the program. This year for its 6^th edition, the program received a record number of 238 applications! The top 10 finalists wholeheartedly pitched their projects yesterday to a panel of experts and only 5 made the cut, winning an exclusive business pass to Silicon Valley for one week in October.

We are happy to announce this year's #StartUpChallenge winners: Congratulations @sentifi @dotphoton @rovenso_ch @AAAccell1 and @exeonanalytics! pic.twitter.com/6h6kI9w0UD

— Swisscom StartUp (@SwisscomStartUp) August 14, 2018
 

Setting out on October 21, the startups will learn from peer entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and develop their marketing and sales skills. The young entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to win Swisscom's backing in a collaboration or investment.
Jury-member Carole Ackermann, investor and president Business Angels Switzerland, commented on what the program will bring to the startups: “The presenting startups are in different phases. Two or three of them would surely benefit from gaining access to US-VCs. One or two startups could benefit from the collaboration and exchange with the Silicon Valley community and for others the American market is interesting for gaining customers”

Very proud of today’s selection, Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Swisscom Chief Digital Officer added “We are looking forward to travelling to Silicon Valley with the winners of the Swisscom StartUp Challenge and helping them to bring their startup to the next level.”


Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Swisscom Chief Digital Officer

Discover the Swisscom Start-Up Challenge winners below.

AAAccell is a spin-off of the University of Zurich. The team consists of two former bank CEOs, 11 professors and several PhD or Master’s graduates from University of Zurich, ETH, Columbia University New York and others. AAAccell links academic excellence, artificial intelligence and algorithmic power and develops high-tech software solutions for the finance industry in the field of asset and risk management based on the latest breakthroughs in science.
 
Dotphoton is a quantum-inspired raw image compression solution for professional applications: it makes raw images up to 10 times smaller while preserving the quality – saving time and money for image storage, transmission and analysis. Dotphoton is enabling the next generation of high-quality imaging and processing solutions in photography, cinema, AI, biomedical and aerospace. 
 
ExeonAnalytics fights advanced cyber-attacks using award-winning algorithms. It often takes months, if not years, to detect data breaches because they are well hidden among millions of regular user activities. The ExeonTrace security analytics and visualization software allows companies to understand their network traffic and detect hidden cyber-attacks and data breaches.
 
ROVENSO, an EPFL startup initiated in 2014, makes agile sensing robots for challenging environments. Based in Switzerland, it also has workshops and offices in Shenzhen (China) in partnership with HAX Accelerator. It has pilot projects with paying customers in China and Switzerland in the fields of firefighting and security surveillance.
 
Sentifi is a leading provider of financially relevant crowd intelligence. Its solutions are viewed more than 180 million times per month and used by the world’s leading financial service organizations to gain unique insights on over 50,000 traded companies, currencies and commodities and the events that impact them. Sentifi uses machine learning to rank and listen to over 14 million financial influencers.
This year, the public also got to choose which of the finalists was their favourite. We are happy to share that the winner of the public vote is listed among the lucky winners: Rovenso.