Tech startup valuations have soared over the past year. The number of unicorns has skyrocketed.
Globally, startups hit major milestones in 2021, between massive fundraisings, growth and acquisitions. At the same time, many are taking a while to gain some momentum, but they are worth keeping your eyes on – it’s possible they are future household names finding their footing as we speak.
Given the frantic pace of tech growth, it’s unlikely we’ll see a lull in startup activity this year as well. We may see a bigger wave of tech innovations than ever before – whether it’s self-driving cars learning like humans or innovating electrolysis technology to increase the amount of hydrogen gas. In no particular order, here are five tech companies to watch out for in 2022.
Wayve
Founder: Alex Kendall
Segment: autonomous mobility
Imagine a world where self-driving cars are able to adapt to new cities, different terrains, and changing conditions. Adjust to the unpredictable. Learn – much like you do — and respond in any situation.
London-based startup Wayve’s AV2.0 technology completely is pretty much that. It rethinks how to solve self-driving cars by taking a deep learning approach and using lidar cameras and sensors to guide vehicles. The result is a next generation AV technology that can scale and adapt to any driving condition – intelligence is data-driven at every layer, which allows for continuous learning. Given the technology is constantly learning, Wayve is making driving more safe, reliable, accessible, and sustainable.
Last year, online grocer Ocado invested $13.6 million in the pioneering startup. It also partnered with UK’s leading parcel delivery firm DPD on fleet learning technology to help large-scale operators enhance fleet safety.
CrowdScan
Founder: Ben Bellekens
Segment: Big Data & Artificial Intelligence Crowd Analytics
There’s a rising demand for better crowd distribution planning in cities – to increase public safety and avoid large crowds, especially because of the ongoing pandemic. And CrowdScan gives an accurate estimation (within a 5 per cent error rate) of the number of people at one spot. What’s the good thing about it? Its technology can keep accuracy over very large areas, while protecting privacy, and all of that information can be accessed continuously and in real-time in the cloud.
It uses a wireless sensor network and radio frequencies to measure crowd density and movements in busy city centres, shopping streets, or events. It analyses the data to provide results based on specific needs or goals, enabling data-driven governance.
Utilising previous insights and additional data sources, the solution also predicts new evolutions and movements. The crowd analytics market, which finds applications in emergency services and pandemic response, among many other things, is set to grow at a CAGR of over 24 per cent for the forecast period of 2021-2028.
Hystar
Founder: Fredrik Mowill
Segment: Renewable technology
To serve the growing demand for green hydrogen across a range of applications within the renewable power, industrial and mobility markets, Norwegian company Hystar has developed a novel PEM electrolysis technology to increase the amount of hydrogen gas that can be produced through electrolysis by more than 150 per cent compared to current electrolyser technology without using more energy. Most hydrogen recovery is done by reforming natural gases, a process that is responsible for enormous CO2 emissions, but Hystar’s unique cell design and process architecture offers an opportunity to reduce electricity consumption and increase hydrogen output, significantly lowering the cost of green hydrogen production from PEM electrolysis – extracting hydrogen 100 per cent green and clean. The company’s near-term goals is to develop the stack and electrolyser package followed by deployment of pilot units with early customers.
Relectrify
Founders: Valentin Muenzel and Daniel Crowley
Segment: Advanced battery control solutions
Rechargeable batteries, especially those used in mobile devices, turn into waste quite quickly but the majority of their storage performance is still out there.
Australian startup Relectrify develops battery packs that combine used battery cells with their own technology to store solar energy. This way batteries get a second extended life. What’s more, because the innovation is in battery control, the solution is chemistry and cell agnostic, and applicable to both novel and well established battery chemistries. The startup has gained fame for its cell-level battery management system (BMS)+Inverter technology, and closed, last year, a multi-million dollar round of funding from a consortium of global energy investors and energy companies. The company will be using the investment capital to expand the commercialisation team, particularly in key markets in the US, EU and Asia, as well as committing some funding to the continual research and development process.
Evidently AI
Founders: Elena Samuylova and Emeli Dral
Segment: Open source machine learning
Evidently AI is a developer of open-source tools for assessing and tracking the quality of machine learning models based on open data. The project is at an early stage of development at the moment, and the team plans to create a full-fledged monitoring platform.
It has built a tool that generates interactive reports to evaluate your models and data. You need to feed the logs, and it automatically calculates all metrics, statistical tests and generates the visuals. This helps to monitor batch models, debug when something goes wrong, and share how your model performs with other team members. It also has a JSON profile feature that generates a summary of metrics. Businesses can integrate Evidently AI in their prediction pipelines.
The tool is free for individual users and small teams. The company plans to make money on the cloud version of the platform for teams that do not want to launch it on their own. Evidently AI is also considering creating a product based on the open core model, in which some of the solutions for large companies will be paid for.
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