The ICAI Venture program stimulates and supports PhD researchers and staff of the knowledge institutes to look into the possibilities of starting a business with AI solutions. Together with the TTT-AI initiative, ICAI collaborates in a Venture Building program for research based idea’s with start-up potential.
Why an AI knowledge-based startup program?
With the market for AI booming, many knowledge institutions in the Netherlands are making AI a top priority, initiating collaborations with industry partners, and growing their AI faculties. Yet, little attention has been paid to creating AI startups based on all this new scientific knowledge, using these university-industry networks, and making the most of the current time in which AI has fast-growing market potential. Of the total number of current AI startups, only a few are knowledge/science-based. By offering an AI knowledge-based startup program, ICAI wants to respond to that need.
Startups within ICAI
Several AI labs within ICAI already collaborate with (science-based) startups. Donders AI Neurotech Lab for example, works with Phosphoenix, a Dutch startup that spun off from the NESTOR programme (supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) which aims to restore vision in the blind through advanced neurotechnologies. The MasterMinds Lab collaborates with Castlab, a startup from Tilburg that specializes in the production of difficult or non-deliverable parts and small series. And Thira Lab works with Thirona, a spin-off from Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Thirona specializes in the field of AI assisted medical image analysis and is a fast-growing global company.
Partnership with TTT-AI
ICAI has joined forces with the TTT-AI initiative to support researchers and PhD students with bright AI solutions and ideas that potentially could grow into a business. TTT-AI is a collaborative alliance between the Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) of eight universities and medical centres, national research institute CWI and LUMO Labs. Visit the website to find out more about the possibilities the TTT-AI program has to offer to idea’s with start-up potential and to researchers with a knowledge-based idea.