How VC is Solving Today’s Problems with Artificial Intelligence
With artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly gaining ground, the startup ecosystem is harnessing its potential to tackle pressing national challenges head-on. AI will play a pivotal role in expanding economic opportunities, revitalizing outdated systems, and combating the climate crisis, paving the way for a brighter future. Innovation will be further enhanced in sectors as varied as healthcare, national security, and manufacturing to name a few.
Let’s take a look at a few venture-backed companies using AI to solve real-world problems today:
1. EarthOptics
- Where They’re Based: Arlington, Virginia
- What They Do: EarthOptics combines AI-driven analysis with remote sensing to enable farmers to reap the benefits of costly soil testing at a fraction of the cost.
- Why It’s Important: Regular soil testing plays a vital role in the modern farming process, allowing farmers to comprehensively unlock the full potential of agricultural yields.
- A Little More Context: EarthOptics proprietary sensor technology and data analytics innovation enables all farmers to create real-time data maps – an opportunity that was historically only accessible to the largest players. Through its technology, EarthOptics is building a more efficient, productive, and sustainable agricultural sector for the future.
2. Sortera Alloys
- Where They’re Based: Markle, Indiana
- What They Do: Sortera Alloys empowers the recycling of high-performance metals through high-speed automated analysis and sorting.
- Why It’s Important: While simple metals are often recycled, higher-value alloys must be sorted through an expensive, time-consuming process prior to recycling them.
- A Little More Context: With Sortera Alloys’ spectrometer and robotic sorting system, recycling facilities can easily feed all their scrap metal through a single system that sorts the materials into homogenous samples to be melted down and reformed. Sortera’s technology is groundbreaking in advancing the circular economy by making the recycling of various metals more viable.
3. Vitazi.ai
- Where They’re Based: Santa Fe, New Mexico
- What They Do: Vitazi.ai combines computer vision with machine learning algorithms to detect and prevent diabetes-induced vision loss.
- Why It’s Important: Diabetes-induced vision-loss (retinopathy) is the leading cause of vision loss in the U.S. and it can be treated if detected early.
- A Little More Context: Before Vitazi.ai, the detection process was costly and uncomfortable. Utilizing computer vision, Vitazi.ai will help save the vision of tens of thousands of people yearly by making the detection process faster, cheaper, and more effective for the wider population.
4. Shift5
- Where They’re Based: Rosslyn, Virginia
- What They Do: Shift5 improves cybersecurity at scale by automating network mapping, monitoring, and incident response, empowering network defenders.
- Why It’s Important: As the nation’s security needs intensify, the supply of skilled professionals falls short in meeting the demand.
- A Little More Context: Shift5 utilizes AI to revolutionize computer network defense. By automating labor-intensive tasks and even quarantining problematic network components, cybersecurity professionals can now easily detect and address potential issues before they spread throughout the network.
5. Pivot Bio
- Where They’re Based: Berkeley, CA
- What They Do: Pivot Bio fertilizer helps farmers grow crops that capture and metabolize nitrogen from the atmosphere.
- Why It’s Important: Reducing the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers promotes cost-effective and sustainable farming, improving health and creating a cleaner future.
- A Little More Context: Pivot Bio develops microbial nitrogen fertilizers, empowering farmers to reduce costs, enhance crop yields, and contribute to environmental conservation.
By harnessing AI, these examples have offloaded tedious and time-consuming tasks to algorithms, liberating individuals to focus on their core strengths: creative analysis and strategic problem-solving. This paradigm shift holds immense potential for boosting productivity for entire U.S. economy.
Discover the AI revolution: Explore more startups making an impact
Shiloh Tillemann-Dick serves as the Research Director at NVCA. His work focuses on the development of qualitative and quantitative analytical products which provide the rest of the team with the material they need to tell NVCA’s story.