In January, I stepped into the shoes of LG Nova, electronics and home appliance giant LG’s in-house startup incubator, and its search for a different way to do a corporate accelerator. Today, NOVA (short for North American Innovation Center) announces the twenty startups it selected as part of its Mission for the Future global challenge competition. The companies represent new developments in the areas of connected health, energizing mobility, smart lifestyle, metaverse and innovation for impact, which the company describes as an umbrella technology category of “social impact.” Each of these 20 companies will receive $100,000 each to work with LG to create a business framework to run a pilot using the LG Accelerator. “Over the past few months, our work with the top 50 startups has helped us continue to refine our vision for the future as we see new areas of growth for LG,” said Dr. Sokwoo Rhee, Senior Vice President of Innovation at LG. Electronics, whom I also interviewed in January, said in an email. “We are inspired by all of those who have engaged to date with thoughtful and innovative technology innovations to drive and contribute to our collaborative community and guiding principle of ‘outside-in’ innovation. With this announcement, we share the results of our ongoing work to engage with the startup and entrepreneurial community to create impactful technologies that will guide society into the future.” Moving into the next phase in the areas of Smart Lifestyles and Innovation for Impact, LG Nova selected companies that “represent different aspects of people’s changing priorities to simplify life and live better with personalized services”: Digbi, a company related to healthcare that explores the gut area and similar genetic microbiome, AI for the smart home designed to ease the chores of medically challenged households Chefling is a smart kitchen assistant that offers recipes to cook based on ingredients from your grocery receipts . In the Connected Health space, the focus of innovation is shifting to patient-centric care and wellness, accelerated by the pace of adoption of new technologies in healthcare over the past two years. With the focus on developing an advanced technology platform to deliver services, LG Nova selected: MayaMD is a conversational digital human AI health assistant, leveraging AI to provide greater information to patients and providers for better health services. LifeNome is a biological and precision personalized enterprise health platform powered by genomics and AI. Mindset Medical is a camera sensor-based technology platform that can take biological and health readings through your personal device for medical diagnosis by doctors remotely. In the XR category, LG Nova chose a trio of companies that offer “effective alternatives to health and wellness services” for patients through XR/VR/AR environments. XRHealth is a virtual care clinic that provides patient care and rehabilitation through VR/AR together with doctors and real-time data analysis. TRIPP is an XR wellness platform pioneering innovative health and wellness technologies that deepen connection with oneself through fully immersive alternate realities. NeuroTrainer improves focus and performance with virtual reality brain training. In the Metaverse space, LG is pursuing a variety of applications with the intention of driving broader adoption of new immersive and interactive technologies and creating greater business opportunities. Selected: iQ3Connect provides a no-code platform to enable enterprises to create, deliver, and consume complex 3D enterprise applications in the metaverse in a web browser on any AR, VR, or 2D device. Snickerdoodle Labs is building a data exchange agnostic layer that enables people in the next web to control and potentially monetize their personal data through a tokenized data architecture in an all-digital world. YBVR provides live events to fans with the technology to quickly turn streaming live video content into immersive experiences. Finally, LG’s Energizing Mobility category focuses on the electric mobility sector and the electric vehicle charging infrastructure ecosystem, critical to achieving a more sustainable future: SparkCharge offers an affordable and convenient way for vehicle owners to electric vehicles charge their electric vehicles without a direct access charger at home or in the office. in the path. Driivz provides an energy management software platform that removes the complexity of enabling commercial properties to provide electric vehicle charging capabilities to their customers. I-EMS Group, Ltd. uses AI and blockchain to enable energy optimization in smart cities, smart homes, and electric mobility. Kardome’s AI-powered voice aggregation technology optimizes speech for in-vehicle interfaces and plays an important role in the shift towards advanced in-car AI systems. Faction has a unique approach to driverless technology and light electric vehicles that introduces a more efficient way to move goods and people. LG states that the top 20 companies were selected from a pool of more than 1,300 applicants.
