CHF 10,000 for AI-monitored animal health, autonomous drones for extreme environments, AI-driven SaaS for problem detection in industrial inspection processes, next-gen DNA-encoded libraries, and expert autonomous systems for expert information delivery
27.02.2025
AI-Tails, FireDrone, Flycatcher, Pure-DEL, and UTHEREAL.ai were selected at Venture Kick's first financial and entrepreneurial support stage. Their projects enhance pet and livestock health through AI-driven monitoring solutions; develop heat-resistant autonomous drones capable of operating in extreme environments; disrupt the inspection and monitoring environments by providing high detection rates comparable to fine-tuned supervised detection AIs with no need for problems with prior knowledge and 50x less training time; discover orally available macrocycles for challenging targets using a proprietary drug discovery platform, which for the first time allows the creation of very large libraries; and empower experts to turn their content and processes into expert AI companion "Co-Pilots" for the practitioners and consumers of this expert field.
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 AI-Tails: CEO Angelica De Riggi, CTO Damian Gruper, CPO Johannes Löckinger
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 FireDrone: Co-founders Dr. Fabian Wiesemüller, David Häusermann, and Prof. Mirko Kovac
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 Flycatcher Co-Founders: Dr. Dario Mantegazza, Dr. Lorenzo Galli, and Elia Cereda
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 Pure-DEL: Michelle Keller, Andreas Gloger, Dimitar Petrov & Jörg Scheuermann
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 UTHEREAL.ai: João Carvalho
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AI-Tails: Revolutionizing Animal Health Monitoring with AI
Every year, countless animals suffer from undetected health issues, leading to high veterinary costs, unnecessary suffering, and, in extreme cases, loss of life. Traditional health monitoring methods rely on manual observation, which is often reactive and imprecise. AI-Tails aims to bridge this gap by providing an intelligent, data-driven solution that detects anomalies early, allowing owners to take preventive action to ensure the well-being of their animals and save costs at the same time.
Founded by Angelica De Riggi (CEO), Johannes Löckinger (CPO), and Damian Gruber (CTO), AI-Tails analyzes real-time sensor data and behavior patterns to detect health anomalies early, providing pet and livestock owners with actionable insights. With a rapidly growing market for smart pet and livestock care solutions, AI-Tails is positioned as a first mover in AI-driven animal health monitoring in pets.
The Venture Kick funding will be used to increase visibility, reach target customers, and prepare for market entry.
FireDrone: Autonomous drones for extreme environments
Firefighters and industrial safety teams struggle with monitoring and assessing high-temperature environments, such as burning buildings or industrial ovens, due to extreme heat, toxic smoke, and structural hazards. Current drone technology cannot withstand these conditions, leaving a critical gap in real-time situational awareness.
The FireDrone project is led by the future co-founders Dr. Fabian Wiesemüller, David Häusermann, and Prof. Mirko Kovac. The company develops heat-resistant autonomous drones capable of operating in extreme environments. Utilizing advanced thermal insulation and cooling technologies, the drones provide real-time data where traditional solutions fail. The industrial safety and firefighting drone market is projected to exceed USD 2 billion, presenting significant opportunities for FireDrone's innovative solution.
Venture Kick funds will primarily support proof-of-concept (PoC) tests with an industrial partner at their fabrication site, validating the drone’s performance in real-world high-temperature conditions. Additional funding will be allocated to refining the prototype and expanding early-stage partnerships.
Flycatcher: AI-driven SaaS for problem detection in complex industrial and transport inspection processes
Traditional and modern inspection methods are expensive and inefficient—often requiring extensive data or expert oversight. In contrast, Flycatcher's solutions model what “normal” looks like for your systems and flag deviations in real-time, without the need for exhaustive historical data or defect knowledge.
Flycatcher was incorporated in 2024 by Co-Founders Dr. Dario Mantegazza, Dr. Lorenzo Galli, and Elia Cereda, now incubated at the USI Startup Centre. The proprietary AI technology is based on Dr. Mantegazza's 4-year research work at IDSIA (USI-SUPSI) on visual unsupervised anomaly detection in complex environments. Already optimized for running on low-power hardware, Flycatcher SaaS disrupts the inspection and monitoring environments by providing high detection rates comparable to fine-tuned supervised detection AIs with no need for problems with prior knowledge and 50x less training time. Flycatcher solutions have been already validated in POCs in the transportation sector for solving problems valued in millions of CHF/year.
The Venture Kick funds will be invested in further market exploration, fair participation, and customer reach. flycatcher.ai
Pure-DEL: Targeting the Undruggable by Next-Generation DNA-Encoded Libraries
Drugging many pharmaceutically relevant proteins remains a challenge, as traditional medicines such as biologics have difficulty entering cells and small molecules do not exhibit sufficient binding ability to numerous protein surfaces.
Pure-DEL is a team of four scientists from ETH, including Dr. Dimitar Petrov and Dr. Michelle Keller (future Co-CEO/CSO) who co-developed Pure-DEL technology during their PhD projects, Dr. Andreas Gloger, an expert in encoded library screening and protein engineering, as well as Prof. Jörg Scheuermann, one of the pioneers of DEL technology and PI at ETH Zürich. Pure-DEL discovers orally available macrocycles for challenging targets using its proprietary drug discovery platform, which for the first time allows the creation of very large libraries (> 1 billion molecules) of chemically synthesized complex natural product-like macrocycles to yield orally bioavailable ligands, usable against difficult targets.
The Venture Kick funds will contribute to business development and advertising the technology to specialists in drug discovery at various events and conferences.
UTHEREAL.ai: Expert Autonomous Systems for Expert Information Delivery
UTHEREAL.ai is on a mission to build intelligent systems that democratize access to expert knowledge and share it with the world. Expert knowledge will be essential in fueling tomorrow’s business processes and will be the foundation of building autonomous AI systems.
The platform empowers experts to turn their content and processes into expert AI companion "Co-Pilots" for the practitioners and consumers of this expert field. It deploys state-of-the-art AI agents capable of searching, extracting knowledge, and guiding practitioners through complex processes with the ultimate goal of enhancing human productivity or enabling full automation.
UTHEREAL’s technology enables fully interpretable control over the agent design and empowers experts with end-to-end analytics through user engagement, conflicting content analysis, and anomaly reporting. All this is built with IP and privacy protection at its core, and tuned to work in highly specialized fields (e.g. legal and medical).
The Venture Kick funds will support the development of UTHEREAL’s platform scalability to meet the needs of a growing customer base.
Every year, countless animals suffer from undetected health issues, leading to high veterinary costs, unnecessary suffering, and, in extreme cases, loss of life. Traditional health monitoring methods rely on manual observation, which is often reactive and imprecise. AI-Tails aims to bridge this gap by providing an intelligent, data-driven solution that detects anomalies early, allowing owners to take preventive action to ensure the well-being of their animals and save costs at the same time.
Founded by Angelica De Riggi (CEO), Johannes Löckinger (CPO), and Damian Gruber (CTO), AI-Tails analyzes real-time sensor data and behavior patterns to detect health anomalies early, providing pet and livestock owners with actionable insights. With a rapidly growing market for smart pet and livestock care solutions, AI-Tails is positioned as a first mover in AI-driven animal health monitoring in pets.
The Venture Kick funding will be used to increase visibility, reach target customers, and prepare for market entry.
FireDrone: Autonomous drones for extreme environments
Firefighters and industrial safety teams struggle with monitoring and assessing high-temperature environments, such as burning buildings or industrial ovens, due to extreme heat, toxic smoke, and structural hazards. Current drone technology cannot withstand these conditions, leaving a critical gap in real-time situational awareness.
The FireDrone project is led by the future co-founders Dr. Fabian Wiesemüller, David Häusermann, and Prof. Mirko Kovac. The company develops heat-resistant autonomous drones capable of operating in extreme environments. Utilizing advanced thermal insulation and cooling technologies, the drones provide real-time data where traditional solutions fail. The industrial safety and firefighting drone market is projected to exceed USD 2 billion, presenting significant opportunities for FireDrone's innovative solution.
Venture Kick funds will primarily support proof-of-concept (PoC) tests with an industrial partner at their fabrication site, validating the drone’s performance in real-world high-temperature conditions. Additional funding will be allocated to refining the prototype and expanding early-stage partnerships.
Flycatcher: AI-driven SaaS for problem detection in complex industrial and transport inspection processes
Traditional and modern inspection methods are expensive and inefficient—often requiring extensive data or expert oversight. In contrast, Flycatcher's solutions model what “normal” looks like for your systems and flag deviations in real-time, without the need for exhaustive historical data or defect knowledge.
Flycatcher was incorporated in 2024 by Co-Founders Dr. Dario Mantegazza, Dr. Lorenzo Galli, and Elia Cereda, now incubated at the USI Startup Centre. The proprietary AI technology is based on Dr. Mantegazza's 4-year research work at IDSIA (USI-SUPSI) on visual unsupervised anomaly detection in complex environments. Already optimized for running on low-power hardware, Flycatcher SaaS disrupts the inspection and monitoring environments by providing high detection rates comparable to fine-tuned supervised detection AIs with no need for problems with prior knowledge and 50x less training time. Flycatcher solutions have been already validated in POCs in the transportation sector for solving problems valued in millions of CHF/year.
The Venture Kick funds will be invested in further market exploration, fair participation, and customer reach. flycatcher.ai
Pure-DEL: Targeting the Undruggable by Next-Generation DNA-Encoded Libraries
Drugging many pharmaceutically relevant proteins remains a challenge, as traditional medicines such as biologics have difficulty entering cells and small molecules do not exhibit sufficient binding ability to numerous protein surfaces.
Pure-DEL is a team of four scientists from ETH, including Dr. Dimitar Petrov and Dr. Michelle Keller (future Co-CEO/CSO) who co-developed Pure-DEL technology during their PhD projects, Dr. Andreas Gloger, an expert in encoded library screening and protein engineering, as well as Prof. Jörg Scheuermann, one of the pioneers of DEL technology and PI at ETH Zürich. Pure-DEL discovers orally available macrocycles for challenging targets using its proprietary drug discovery platform, which for the first time allows the creation of very large libraries (> 1 billion molecules) of chemically synthesized complex natural product-like macrocycles to yield orally bioavailable ligands, usable against difficult targets.
The Venture Kick funds will contribute to business development and advertising the technology to specialists in drug discovery at various events and conferences.
UTHEREAL.ai: Expert Autonomous Systems for Expert Information Delivery
UTHEREAL.ai is on a mission to build intelligent systems that democratize access to expert knowledge and share it with the world. Expert knowledge will be essential in fueling tomorrow’s business processes and will be the foundation of building autonomous AI systems.
The platform empowers experts to turn their content and processes into expert AI companion "Co-Pilots" for the practitioners and consumers of this expert field. It deploys state-of-the-art AI agents capable of searching, extracting knowledge, and guiding practitioners through complex processes with the ultimate goal of enhancing human productivity or enabling full automation.
UTHEREAL’s technology enables fully interpretable control over the agent design and empowers experts with end-to-end analytics through user engagement, conflicting content analysis, and anomaly reporting. All this is built with IP and privacy protection at its core, and tuned to work in highly specialized fields (e.g. legal and medical).
The Venture Kick funds will support the development of UTHEREAL’s platform scalability to meet the needs of a growing customer base.