After an exhaustive selection process which opened with a call for applications open in mid-February, Techstars Montreal has now announced its second cohort. 6 of the 10 startups are Canadian, featuring 3 from the Montreal area.

This year’s class of startups has a broad industry scope with companies focusing on aquaculture, reproductive health, public transit, graphics rendering, and music - just to name a few. The founders of these startups joined the program in early September and quickly got to work.

“Our first class was made of startups applying AI to a very broad set of industries. Preparing for this second group, we wanted to work with startups with deeper R&D challenges. This means even earlier stage companies but we believe these companies will get even more out of the deep research expertise in AI we have in Montreal.” said Bruno Morency, Managing Director of Techstars Montreal AI.

The Techstars team traveled to different cities from February to May to host meetups and meet 1-on-1 with entrepreneurs. After 2 months of reviewing applications, they team got it down to a final group of 10 companies making up this cohort. Each will receive an investment up to $120,000 (USD) from Techstars. Participating companies include:

• Eli – For women who want to take control of their reproductive health naturally and effectively, Eli is developing an AI-powered biosensor that allows individualized decision-making.
• Blaise Transit – Using machine learning to optimize bus fleets in real-time based on passenger trip requests, through their universal on-demand bus platform, and;
• Micropredictome– Using the human microbiome and machine learning in order to offer a simple, cheap and non-invasive home diagnostic test for various gut diseases.

Each of these 3 are from the Montreal area, with 3 other Canadian companies participating:

• Spliqs– Harnessing the power of AI to let anyone create music. (Vancouver)
• ReelData – A.I. solutions that allow fish farms to understand metrics around health, hunger and growth, leading to an increase in production and sustainability. (Halifax) and;
• Hello Iris– Making curated matches for meaningful first dates. We’re building a better dating experience (Toronto)

Participants from overseas include:

• MorphL – Helping eCommerce companies that struggle with the complexity of AI adoption by lowering the barrier to integrating AI-based solutions and offering a suite of predictive models that are fully automated, that can be used across the full customer journey and are platform agnostic. (Romania)
• Lightmass Dynamics – Building a more efficient foundation for real-time 3D graphics and simulation. (Slovenia)
• FLOD – Proactive maintenance with sensors and AI. (France) and;
• AI – Autonomous vehicle software for city services, farming, and delivery. (Russia)

The Techstars Montreal AI demo day will take place on December 4, 2019.