6.22.22-Showcase-Rapid-Fire-Intro

ARIADNA RODENSTEIN: So Hello again. A third and final time, I promise. We are approaching the end of the program. And of course, we couldn't leave out some of the California-based startups, also members of MIT Startup Exchange. So you will hear now from seven startups and technologies, including sustainability. But also, as I had mentioned, robotics, big data and analytics, and AI, ML, and augmented reality among others.

So plenty of startups to talk to today. Thank you again for being here. And as my colleagues in corporate relations say, brace yourself. This is going to be the fastest that you'll hear from startups yet. So we'll start with MosaicML. Thank you.

NIKLAS NIELSEN: Hello, everyone. So, I am Niklas Nielsen, and I'm the head of product for MosaicML. MosaicML is a company that helps corporations dramatically reduce the cost and the carbon footprint of ML model development. The majority of our team are MIT alumni. And our founding advisor is a tenured MIT professor. So, basically the best talent in the world working on machine learning training efficiency.

Through a combination of algorithms and system optimizations in our cloud offering, we have basically seen between 2x and 7x improvement in time and in cost for language and vision models. And we do this through a cloud that is specifically designed for deep learning, optimizes every single layer from the hardware to the algorithms. Our cloud integrates with existing tools and workflows and doesn't require you to move your data out of your current environments.

So we would love to partner with corporations who are training computer vision or language models and want to save money on their training budget. So yeah, reach out to me at Nicholas@MosaicML.com or reach me after the session.

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PATRICK SHANNON: Good afternoon. My name is Patrick Shannon. I'm MIT class of 2009, AeroAstro. I am also CEO and founder of TrustPoint. As many of us are aware, GPS is ubiquitous. It is foundational to both modern society and the global economy, playing critical roles in everything from financial transactions, to gaming, to transportation, and military operations.

Unfortunately, GPS has some serious fallbacks and serious weaknesses. It's slow to lock, inaccurate in a lot of cases, unencrypted, and surprisingly, easy to jam. Due to that, it is not a great solution for tomorrow's safety critical of life in high-precision applications, applications like autonomous navigation both on land and air as well as augmented reality and 5G/6G networking.

To address these, TrustPoint is developing the first fully commercial GPS alternative service, leveraging our own constellation of low Earth orbiting micro satellites and our patent-pending signal processing technologies. Since our seed funding last year, we've grown our team, matured our core technologies, expanded our patent portfolio, and are currently in the process of moving our tech demonstrations from the lab to the field.

Our first product that we bring to market is the timing and synchronization module to provide secure, encrypted nanosecond timing to fixed terrestrial users, users like cell base stations and data centers. And then I guess, from that, we're currently seeking partnerships in the 5G OEM network operators and semiconductor sectors. So folks like that in the room we'd love to talk to you guys. Please come find me at the break. Thank you.

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ZACH HENDLIN: Hi, my name is Zach. Hi, my name is Zach. I'm CEO of Zing Data, and we are making data actionable, super simple, and usable from anywhere. We're the first platform for collaborative business intelligence where you can actually ask questions on your phone.

So what we're going to do right here is from scratch query a database. We're going to access the support tickets. We're going to tap and drag to get hours worked, and we're going to tap and drag to group by topic and platform. And in less than 30 seconds we're able to query data from scratch on our phone.

What this means is you can take data and put it in people's hands in the field. And then, you can use collaborative functionality to at mention, bring people in, and actually get people to take action. So we're looking for early folks to partner with as we roll this out to folks in the field.

We've already got more than 800 folks who've signed up across a dozen countries. And we'd love to help you guys all make data actionable in the field and in factories, so that as you're trying to build really an informed workforce who can make better decisions about sustainability and everything else. They have the data to do so. Zach@GetZingData, or we'll be around at the reception after. Thanks.

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ANAND GOPALAN: Good afternoon. Imagine that you are going grocery shopping. And now imagine that 15 minutes or less after you order your groceries online, it showed up at your doorstep, and it costs $2 for a delivery. And most importantly, now imagine that the delivery happened with 125th the carbon footprint of if you had driven to the grocery store.

That's the vision that we want to bring to life at Vayu Robotics. And hi, I'm the Anand. I'm the CEO and co-founder. And we realized this vision effectively by creating a mobile robot that is capable of delivering goods of up to 120 pounds at a speed of less than 20 miles per hour in indoor or outdoor scenarios, and a robot that's built with the lowest bill of materials and lowest cost of operation of anything out there.

And we do this on the backs of some really interesting technology that came out of MIT from my co-founders, Ramesh Raskar, in terms of sensing technology that is capable of sensing the world robustly in three dimensions with a low cost of a standard camera-like system as well as an autonomous vehicle stack that does away with HT maps and minimizes real world data collection and is very easy to deploy, and last but certainly not the least, a payload-efficient, carbon-efficient, energy-efficient robotic design.

All of this comes together to realize this vision that we believe will democratize autonomous mobile robots across many different industries. So if you're interested in micromobility or in adding intelligence to your robotic applications or simply in cheaper groceries, come see me at the reception or send me an email. Thank you.

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KINUKO MASAKI: Hello, my name is Kinuko Masaki. I'm the founder of VoiceBrain and also an MIT lifer. So VoiceBrain helps company avoid the worst case scenario. And that's because mission-critical conversations happen daily on your radio channels. And failure to respond to them immediately leads to financial liability. And the problems we've resolved in the past include security breaches, medical emergency, power outages, and much more.

So VoiceBrain helps companies identify problems in real time by leveraging their current infrastructure, including radios. So what we do is we capture all radio conversations. We upload it into the cloud. We transcribe it from voice to text. Then, we analyze it in real-time. And therefore, when a problem occurs, we send you an immediate alert to reduce risk and increase safety and security.

And the whole implementation process takes less than 5 minutes. Currently, we've been working with the likes of ESPN, the police at Westchester County in New York, and the San Francisco International Airport. So if your company uses radios for communication, we would love to partner with you. Thank you very much.

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ALAN LEE: Hi, my name is Alan Lee. I'm the president of LongWave Photonics. And we're a Mountain View-based startup using technology developed by myself and my colleagues and the research group of Cheng Hu at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. And the problem we're trying to solve is clean energy generation by atomic fusion.

And compared with traditional nuclear power, atomic fusion uses clean abundant hydrogen isotopes for fuel and produces no radioactive waste. But it's a very difficult process. And you have to compress the fuel at high enough densities, heat it up high enough in temperature, and hold it there long enough that the atoms fuse and release their energy.

So we're developing a diagnostic for this using laser technology. And so this technology was developed at MIT. And we've since developed additional patents in conjunction with MIT. And the key technology is something called a terahertz quantum-cascade laser. And it emits at a unique frequency that interacts with the Fusion core and reveals processes that are going on inside.

And so you can kind of see this in the upper right there is ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It's a $60 billion multinational project going online in 2025. And the way our system would work is we would fire our lasers in a configuration around the fusion core. And then, we'd build up a map of the fuel density and confinement parameters.

And so in terms of traction, we have a prototype system going into a commercial fusion reactor in 2023. And we hope to convert that into a commercial system in 2024. So if you're interested in clean tech or atomic fusion or just want to talk about technology, I'm happy to talk with you afterwards.

TOM DOBROTH: Hi, my name is Tom Dobroth. I'm a course two, two times over, bachelor's and master's. And for those of you who are not an MIT, that's mechanical engineering. What we're looking at is a 45 to 1 speed reducer. It's a replacement for transmissions. And it is frictionless the surfaces are designed so those rollers roll perfectly.

This is relevant for anything that spins. And right now, if you think about power and what is used, most of the energy in this world goes through gear teeth twice, once when the energy is created, and once when it's used. Gear teeth are remarkably inefficient, particularly on the inexpensive use side.

So you may be down to 80%, 70%. In fact, most robotics use systems that are around 60% efficient. So with this device, I'm hoping to take a big chunk out of that. I think we're losing at least 15% of worldwide energy in gear teeth. And with this device, I'm hoping that we take a big chunk out of that 15%. Thank you.

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MARCUS DAHILOF: All right. So that concludes the formal program for today. Thank you everyone for attending. We are going to have the informal program, which is the reception now. There's going to be some food and drinks.

I also want to point out that starting in September, we'll be back doing events. We actually have an event on sustainability on campus at MIT on September 20th and 21st that might be of interest to you guys in the room. Thank you very much.

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