Nineteen of Boston’s most promising early-stage startups won a total of $1.65 million at Wednesday night’s MassChallenge awards ceremony.
The startup accelerator’s top four winners — EBT Medical, Infinite Cooling, Mobile Pixels and WatchTower Robotics — each won $100,000, while two more startups received $75,000 each and nine other companies brought home $50,000 each.
Also, additional $500,000 were awarded to two startups in partnership with CASIS & Boeing to fund research projects on the International Space Station. In a first, PepsiCo also awarded $150,000 to two startups that are developing innovative solutions in the business services and food and beverage spaces.
The nineteen startups were chosen out of MassChallenge’s 26 finalists, which came from a pool of 128 startups that MassChallenge admitted to its Boston’s acceleration program in May.
"Everyone dreams of changing the world, but very few people actually set out to do it," Kiki Mills Johnston, managing director of MassChallenge Boston, in a statement. "It’s been incredible to engage with top entrepreneurs as they develop solutions to dramatically improve our society – from the way we live to the way we work."
Here are this year’s Boston winners (with descriptions provided by MassChallenge):
$100K Diamond Winners
EBT Medical — Canada | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Develops novel, discreet, non-invasive neurostimulation therapies for the enormous under treated overactive bladder market.
Infinite Cooling — Massachusetts | Clean Tech — Disrupts the way power plans use water by capturing and recycling evaporative losses in cooling towers.
Mobile Pixels — Massachusetts | General — Lets users pack their productivity anywhere you go—whether you’re working in a hotel room or in a café.
WatchTower Robotics — Massachusetts | High Tech — Uses robots to help water pipe operators find leaks, save water, and protect infrastructure.
$75K Platinum Winners
Oxalo Therapeutics — Illinois | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Biotech company developing a novel drug to prevent kidney stones using breakthroughs in microbiome research.
SurgiBox — Massachusetts | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Creates the Operating Room in a Backpack, protecting patients and providers any time, any place.
$50K Gold Winners
addapptation — Massachusetts | High Tech — Provides user experience-as-a-service for Salesforce.com customers.
Boston Materials LLC — Massachusetts | General — Creating a revolutionary three-dimensionally reinforced carbon fiber composite.
cleancult — Massachusetts | General — Makes household green cleaners that actually clean.
IQ Bar — Massachusetts | General — Makes and sells brain fuel nutrition bars packed with six functional nutrients and hit the Keto + Paleo + Vegan trifecta.
Magnomer — Massachusetts | Social Impact — Creates magnetic markers for zero waste plastic packaging.
MTonomy — Massachusetts | General — Empowers media artists and businesses with a complete blockchain infrastructure to publish, license, and monetize their content directly.
PionEar — Massachusetts | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Revolutionizing treatment of ear infections with minimally invasive, antifouling, drug delivery ear tube implants.
Project Alianza — Massachusetts | Social Impact — Fills the rural education gap in Nicaragua by building, developing, and staffing robust primary schools on privately-owned coffee farms.
VitaScan — Massachusetts | Social Impact — Provides fast, accurate, and mobile nutrition deficiency testing.
CASIS and Boeing Prize
Kernal Biologics — Massachusetts | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Developing onco-selective mRNA therapeutics for cancer.
MicroQuin — England | Healthcare / Life Sciences — Creates targeted delivery of chemotherapy with a fast time-to-market.
PepsiCo Prize
Makomas — Massachusetts | General — Excites palates with authentic, delicious, and nutrient-rich beverages in hibiscus, moringa, and baobab.
Pumpspotting — Maine | Social Impact — Social app and global community connecting breastfeeding women over milk, motherhood, and the best places to nurse and pump.
