Final two days, 20 startups introduced their companies as part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022. These 20 companies were selected as the best in the all-new Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for the chance to take home the Battlefield Cup and $100,000.
TechCrunch’s expert editors and judges have selected them to be among the following five finalists, who will present to a brand new panel of judges on the final day of Disrupt, May 20. October 2022:
Advanced Ionics
Advanced Ionics is trying to lower the price of green hydrogen by cutting the amount of electricity needed for electrolysis by up to 50%. It’s an admirable goal, because despite all the hype about hydrogen being “fuel of the future“This industry is largely still filthy – fueling climate chaos through polluting production methods. Most of the human-generated hydrogen is”grey“; a classification that means that manufacturers rely on methane (or worse, burning coal) to isolate the element for use in fertilizers and fuel. But when it comes to climate change awareness and concern hydrogen-powered freight transport increasing, so there is also a need for a more eco-friendly alternative. In contrast to the gray stuff, “green” hydrogen uses renewable energy and electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It’s a climatically superior production method, but it’s also expensive because it requires tons of clean energy.
Application map
Headquarters in Boston Application map want to prevent bad code from ever going into production. The open-source dynamic runtime code analysis tool, which the startup claims is the first of its kind, is built on the simple idea that developers can see the behavior of software when they write it so they can prevent problems when the software runs. . Unlike static analysis tools that don’t display runtime information, AppMap – built from the ground up over a three-year period – runs in the code editor to let developers know what components are in transit. communicate with which components, at throughput and latency, at what network speed, and whether there are any errors between them, allowing developers to gain useful insights and make improvements. advance faster than before.
Introverted material
Plastics are great for a lot of things, but they last a very long time. Intropic Jump to the rescue with a set of enzymes that can be added to plastics early in their life cycle, before it is turned into a product. The additives the company makes are proof-tested and they want to improve the way plastics are made and processed. Intropic’s additives make many of the most commonly used plastics biodegradable during conventional commercial composting. Enzymes are added to pellets or powders used in the production of conventional resins. This gives plastics new, biodegradable capabilities without changing the manufacturing processes used to make plastic products. At the end of the life cycle, when it is time to dispose of the material, the products can be annealed into their constituent parts.
Minerva Lithium
Minerva Lithium manufactured Nano Mosaic, a coordinated polymer framework that looks like black gravel, and extracted vital materials from salt water in just three days. Minerva says it can extract a ton of lithium using just 30,000 gallons of water, and it can do it in three days. The evaporative brine treatment process requires evaporating 500,000 gallons of water to obtain the same amount of lithium. Just one gram of this absorbent has a surface area about the size of a football field, which should give you an idea of how small you need to extract large amounts of minerals.
Swap Robots
Swap Robotics makes electric lawn mowing and snow removal robots and details how it builds equipment for sustainable outdoor work. Over the next few years, 95% of the startup’s focus will be on enabling robots to mow lawns and vegetation on more than 1,000-acre solar farms. The company’s second focus is on plowing sidewalks. The team decided their mission was to create a solution that could sustainably mow in a controlled environment. Swap Robotics has recognized that solar-powered vegetation cutting comes with its challenges, as it requires a unique type of cutting deck that can get under the solar panels and perceive that a robotic solution can solve the problem.
