AWS Public Sector Blog

Announcing the 12 startups selected for the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to officially announce the innovative startups chosen to participate in the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator. These selected startups are developing groundbreaking solutions to help cities address sustainability challenges, like tackling traffic analysis, smart internet of things (IoT) lampposts, and much more. The 12 companies were selected from hundreds of applications, representing 19 countries, by a panel of experts from AWS, Freshwater Advisors, and Public Spend Forum. The types of startups that applied to the program ranged from pre-revenue to $50 million in annual revenue and from one to more than 500 employees.

AWS launched the Sustainable Cities Accelerator program in March to help address the crucial need for innovation and collaborative solutions to address global climate and clean tech challenges. This is a customer-focused accelerator in which selected startups are eligible to receive technical, business, and go-to-market mentorship from AWS sustainability experts, up to $100,000 in AWS Promotional Credits through AWS Activate, and collaboration opportunities with AWS customers, industry leaders, and members of AWS Partner Network (APN) looking for sustainable solutions. The program is delivered along with Freshwater Advisors, a national innovation consultancy and venture catalyst, and Public Spend Forum, a market intelligence platform connecting government buyers with innovation.

The 12 finalists in the cohort originate from four countries across North America, Latin America, and Europe, and represent a wide-range of innovative sustainable solutions:

  • Actionfigure based in Washington, DC, provides software that helps people make smarter decisions about transportation, save time, and get around cities more sustainably. Their analytics also help commercial real estate owners and workplace occupiers capitalize on location using Motional Intelligence: insight into how people move to, from, and around their properties.
  • Automotus, Inc out of Los Angeles, CA helps cities, airports, and fleets reduce congestion, safety hazards, and emissions caused by the influx of commercial vehicles in urban areas. Their first-of-its-kind computer vision technology provides comprehensive insights and automation to tackle these challenges at the curb.
  • Circuit based in West Palm Beach, FL, is changing how people move short distances by making transportation simpler, greener, and cheaper. They are building on-demand, last-mile shuttle services in cities around the US. Using their on-demand app, 100% electric vehicles, and teams of drivers, Circuit has provided over five million rides without burning an ounce of gas or traveling more than a few miles.
  • Flow Labs in Oakland, CA, provides an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software platform that empowers transportation agencies to manage and optimize the flow of vehicles in their cities.
  • Hidden Level, Inc from Syracuse, NY, supports the safety of low altitude airspace above our cities by providing actionable data through its distributed sensor network, the Airspace Monitoring Service.
  • OMNIFLOW from Porto, Portugal, provides sustainable smart city solutions. Omniflow Smart IoT Lamppost, powered by wind and solar, transforms a streetlight into a sustainable platform that can host many applications like small cells, computer vision, audio analytics, and many other solutions that can even generate revenues.
  • OpConnect, Inc based in Portland, OR reduces greenhouse gases caused by transportation with a smart electronic vehicle (EV) charging platform that protects the electric grid, minimizes costs of electricity, and maximizes use of renewable energy. They specialize in fleet and multi-family housing charging because fleets are a large source of emissions and a significant portion of the population live in apartments and condos, so tackling these two segments will have a significant impact on climate change.
  • Pantonium Inc based in Toronto, Canada is a clean-tech software company, using a patented route optimization algorithm to help cities deliver efficient and sustainable on-demand public transit to help them move more people in an on-demand world.
  • Populus Technologies, Inc. from San Francisco, CA, helps cities and private mobility providers deliver safe, efficient, and equitable streets. The Populus platform is a comprehensive digital solution that empowers cities to manage their streets and curbs—with access to mobility data from shared bike, scooter, moped and carsharing operators, and delivery services.
  • Talyn Air, Inc. based in Los Angeles, CA provides autonomous battery electric point-to-point flights for cargo that don’t need airports or runways. Talyn Air solves middle-mile and last-mile challenges with fast air service for payloads up to 500 lbs.
  • Ualabee based in Cordoba, Argentina is a big-data mobility company that integrates data from urban transportation, micro-mobility, and ride-hailing operators to offer trip planning and data analytics solutions to users and businesses.
  • Urban SDK in Jacksonville, FL is an advanced data analytics platform to make better decisions with location data. They aggregate data from the physical world and turn it into intelligence for city planning, real estate decisions, transportation improvements, and digital twin technology.

Responding to the global climate crisis will require innovation and collaboration across industries, governments, startups, and global corporations. From energy transformation, to mobility and transportation, to the built world, to the circular economy—clean tech investment and innovation is surging. AWS designed the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for startups looking to drive technical and commercial milestones by leveraging cutting-edge technologies from AWS in support of developing solutions to support sustainable cities.

Over six weeks, the 12 startups will be virtually connected with AWS customers, digging deeper into their current challenges to learn how new innovations can be part of the solution. The accelerator will immerse these startups in the cloud with hands-on technical training in capabilities like machine learning (ML) and high performance computing (HPC), and offer each of them up to $100,000 in AWS Promotional Credits through AWS Activate to experiment with and accelerate how they transform their data and operations in the cloud.

This program is being offered with support from customers and key supporting community participants. To help accelerate the transition to sustainable cities, and drive commercialization of joint solutions to climate change, our customers and community collaborators have the opportunity to engage directly with these startups, serving as advisors and mentors along their journey. The selected startups will also receive mentorship from subject matter experts, along with business development. The culmination of this program will be the AWS Sustainable Cities Demo Day, where the startups will showcase their technology in person at the Evergreen Climate Innovations Co_Invest Day. Register to join the Evergreen Climate Innovations Co_Invest Day in person.

Learn more about how AWS supports sustainability customers and partners. Read about about how Freshwater Advisors is helping connect corporations to entrepreneurial ecosystems, and check out the Public Spend Forum.

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