Congratulations to NovaBuild, the Spring 2024 TVLIC Texas Champion!
The Spring 2024 Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition was held on Friday, May 3 featuring the top graduate student startups on the UT campus. After twenty nine companies competed in five semifinal rounds in the morning, five teams advanced to the finals in Crum Auditorium in the afternoon.
NovaBuild was awarded the top prize of $15,000 for its software platform, powered by computer vision and deep learning, that offers a way for robotics solutions startups to collaborate with the nation’s largest factories to reshape the future of advanced robotics in manufacturing. Founder Anuj Swaminathan is a 2025 Masters candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering.
The Texas Superstar and $5,000 prize went to Trinity Tube, a multifunction feeding tube for infants born prematurely that includes wireless vital sign monitoring and quantified metrics of work of breathing by sensors embedded in a feeding tube indwelling inside the esophagus and stomach instead of using irritant skin-mounted sensors. Trinity Tube also was awarded a $10,000 prize for Commercialization.
The Texas Rising Star and $2,500 prize went to Predictive Pixels, an analytical platform capable of forecasting the sales impact of video advertisements before they are launched using a proprietary technology that is able to quantify how engaging a product is within a video. By providing advertisers and creators with unprecedented insights during the video creative development process, this predictive capability allows for strategic adjustments and optimization, ensuring maximum effectiveness of advertising dollars from the outset.
TVLIC Finalist AirMax was the winner of the Energy Innovation Award and $5,000 prize for an HVAC hardware retrofit system that improves energy efficiency of existing commercial air conditioning systems.
The Sustainability Innovation Award and $5,000 prize went to Verified Carbon for its project development of direct air capture facilities in the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast.
The Health Innovation Award and $5,000 prize went to Quickmo for its medical device that increases the likelihood of survival in patients that suffer from in-hospital cardiac arrests. Quickmo’s device can automatically cannulate vessels which reduces the time that it takes to place a patient on a heart-lung machine.
The Robert W. Cone Veteran Entrepreneurship Award and a $1,000 prize went to Alpha Edge Data Terminal, which uses an AI-driven platform to rapidly transform alternative data like satellite imagery and social media into actionable insights that empower small-to-medium-sized hedge funds to harness complex datasets for faster, more accurate investment decisions.
All of the competing teams also presented two-minute pitches in the Ann Whitt Elevator Pitch Challenge which awards a $1,000 prize to the top three presenters. The winners were Trinity Tube, NearbyNext and NovaBuild.
Congratulations to all of the graduate student startups who competed in the Spring 2024 Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition! And thanks to all of our judges, sponsors and volunteers who made it possible.