CHF 40,000 for meat analogs, the next-gen search engine, and a virtual lawyer service
28.07.2023
Advection Engineering, askEarth, and Ex Nunc Intelligence win Venture Kick's second stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects enable the creation of desired complex structures and realistic marbling of fat in meat analogs; address the problem of limited access to Earth Observation (EO) information, which is mainly reserved for data scientists; and revolutionize the way legal professionals work.
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 Advection Engineering: Martin Hofman
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 askEarth, from left to right and top down: CSO Gaetan Petit, COO Manuel Gerold, CDO David Berger, CMO Nina Walker, and CTO Simon Gruening
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 Ex Nunc Intelligence: from left to right, co-founders and co-CEOs Kyriaki Bongard and Zoe Berry, and CTO Laurent Aeschbach
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Advection Engineering: Marbling meat analogs
The demand for reduced meat consumption has led food companies to explore alternatives such as meat analogs. However, while products like patties and sausages are available, analogs of whole cuts like steaks are still missing from the market. This is primarily due to the challenge of replicating the complex structure of muscle fibers and the distinctive marbling of intramuscular fat. Existing approaches, such as additive manufacturing and cultured meat, have limitations in terms of production rate and cost. This creates an opportunity for a solution that can produce realistic, thick, marbled whole-cut meat analogs using plant-based or cell-based ingredients.
The team behind the project, called Advection Engineering, consists of Martin Hofmann, a Pioneer Fellow at ETH Zurich specializing in soft materials, and Prof. Jan Vermant, the head of the soft materials group at ETH Zurich. They have developed a technological platform that utilizes hardware tools and a customized pumping sequence program to create desired complex structures and realistic marbling of fat in meat analogs. Their innovation leverages advective processing, a form of static mixers, to structure protein formulations and distribute fat. This scalable production process is agnostic to the protein source and outperforms existing methods in terms of production rate and thickness. The target market includes food companies interested in selling whole-cut meat analogs, with potential customers already identified. The market for plant-based and cell-based food products is growing globally, and Advection Engineering's technology offers a unique advantage in this expanding sector.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to support the project's development plan and business expansion. The team plans to build and validate demonstrators over the next few months, to successfully use the equipment at a customer's production facility by the end of the year. The funds will cover the expenses associated with the demonstration campaign, including the production of demonstrators and travel costs. The team expects to bill customers for these demonstrations. Additionally, the funds will be allocated to early hires, such as Yves Schilli, an intern with a background in electrical engineering. As the project progresses, further funds will be utilized to increase exposure to potential customers through publications, participation in fairs, and online presence. Key milestones include the inauguration of a working demonstrator, the confirmed agenda of on-site demonstrations, the successful hiring of key positions like a CTO, and the incorporation of a company in Switzerland. These milestones will contribute to the project's growth and eventual commercialization. advection-e.com
askEarth: the next-generation search engine
askEarth aims to address the problem of limited access to Earth Observation (EO) information, which is mainly reserved for data scientists. Despite the vast amount of freely available and up-to-date satellite EO images, the insights derived from them are not easily accessible to the public. E0 images are a powerful tool to fight disinformation and provide traceable insight to the wider audience.
askEarth AG was founded in 2023 by a cross-disciplinary team of four members with extensive experience in entrepreneurship and IT projects. The team behind askEarth includes Gaetan Petit, co-founder of Space4Impact, along with Manuel Gerold, Simon Gruening, and David Berger. The project leverages the expertise and algorithms from research groups at EPFL, UZH, and ETH, integrating them into an intuitive EO answer engine powered by Large Language Models. The platform utilizes open-source Copernicus satellite data and runs on the Azure cloud computing environment. The EO market was valued at USD 2.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to double in the next 10 years. The market opportunity lies in empowering everyone in a company and will be addressing needs in agriculture, commodity trading, insurance, energy, real estate, and ESG reporting corporates. In addition, the company aims to build a community of B2C customers by partnering with newspapers. In 2022, the company received the UZH Entrepreneurship Fellowship to work with the UZH Remote Sensing Laboratory. In January 2023, the company was incubated at ETH as part of the ESA BIC, and they launched their answer engine for professional beta testing in April 2023. The Venture Kick funds will be used to further develop their answer engine and expand their customer base. askearth.space
Ex Nunc Intelligence: Your virtual lawyer
The Swiss legal industry has yet to experience technological disruption, resulting in archaic practices and time-consuming tasks. Despite advancements in artificial intelligence, the legal field remains largely untouched. Inefficiencies persist, such as the absence of a comprehensive and up-to-date database of laws and court decisions. This presents an opportunity for innovation to revolutionize the way legal professionals work.
The team behind Ex Nunc Intelligence consists of legal experts and data scientists with multidisciplinary and qualified backgrounds. Co-founders and co-CEOs are Kyriaki Bongard, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics, a Master in Law and Economics, a Bachelor of Law, and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in financial regulation, and Zoe Berry, a Tax Specialist with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. Laurent Aeschbach, CTO, is a Senior Data Scientist with a Master of Science in analytics (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and a Bachelor in Business Administration. Thomas Seze, the AI Architect, holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, AI and Neurosciences and a Bachelor of Science in Informatics. Remi Zeitoun, the Trainee, is completing a Bachelor in Law at the Geneva University. Ex Nunc Intelligence, a LegalTech startup, aims to transform the Swiss legal ecosystem with its unique and innovative solution. Their product utilizes Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning to tackle these challenges. By offering monthly/annual subscriptions to their virtual lawyer, they provide assistance in various legal tasks, including an up-to-date database of Swiss laws and court decisions, accurate legal answers, and automated drafting of legal opinions. The total addressable market in Switzerland is estimated at 135,191 potential clients, including lawyers, jurists, in-house counsels, compliance departments, and law students, with scalability potential internationally.
Venture Kick funds will be utilized by Ex Nunc Intelligence to implement their hiring plan, focusing on data scientists and NLP specialists. The funds will support the development of their product module by module, testing with Beta users before releasing each module to the market. exnuncintelligence.ch
The demand for reduced meat consumption has led food companies to explore alternatives such as meat analogs. However, while products like patties and sausages are available, analogs of whole cuts like steaks are still missing from the market. This is primarily due to the challenge of replicating the complex structure of muscle fibers and the distinctive marbling of intramuscular fat. Existing approaches, such as additive manufacturing and cultured meat, have limitations in terms of production rate and cost. This creates an opportunity for a solution that can produce realistic, thick, marbled whole-cut meat analogs using plant-based or cell-based ingredients.
The team behind the project, called Advection Engineering, consists of Martin Hofmann, a Pioneer Fellow at ETH Zurich specializing in soft materials, and Prof. Jan Vermant, the head of the soft materials group at ETH Zurich. They have developed a technological platform that utilizes hardware tools and a customized pumping sequence program to create desired complex structures and realistic marbling of fat in meat analogs. Their innovation leverages advective processing, a form of static mixers, to structure protein formulations and distribute fat. This scalable production process is agnostic to the protein source and outperforms existing methods in terms of production rate and thickness. The target market includes food companies interested in selling whole-cut meat analogs, with potential customers already identified. The market for plant-based and cell-based food products is growing globally, and Advection Engineering's technology offers a unique advantage in this expanding sector.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to support the project's development plan and business expansion. The team plans to build and validate demonstrators over the next few months, to successfully use the equipment at a customer's production facility by the end of the year. The funds will cover the expenses associated with the demonstration campaign, including the production of demonstrators and travel costs. The team expects to bill customers for these demonstrations. Additionally, the funds will be allocated to early hires, such as Yves Schilli, an intern with a background in electrical engineering. As the project progresses, further funds will be utilized to increase exposure to potential customers through publications, participation in fairs, and online presence. Key milestones include the inauguration of a working demonstrator, the confirmed agenda of on-site demonstrations, the successful hiring of key positions like a CTO, and the incorporation of a company in Switzerland. These milestones will contribute to the project's growth and eventual commercialization. advection-e.com
askEarth: the next-generation search engine
askEarth aims to address the problem of limited access to Earth Observation (EO) information, which is mainly reserved for data scientists. Despite the vast amount of freely available and up-to-date satellite EO images, the insights derived from them are not easily accessible to the public. E0 images are a powerful tool to fight disinformation and provide traceable insight to the wider audience.
askEarth AG was founded in 2023 by a cross-disciplinary team of four members with extensive experience in entrepreneurship and IT projects. The team behind askEarth includes Gaetan Petit, co-founder of Space4Impact, along with Manuel Gerold, Simon Gruening, and David Berger. The project leverages the expertise and algorithms from research groups at EPFL, UZH, and ETH, integrating them into an intuitive EO answer engine powered by Large Language Models. The platform utilizes open-source Copernicus satellite data and runs on the Azure cloud computing environment. The EO market was valued at USD 2.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to double in the next 10 years. The market opportunity lies in empowering everyone in a company and will be addressing needs in agriculture, commodity trading, insurance, energy, real estate, and ESG reporting corporates. In addition, the company aims to build a community of B2C customers by partnering with newspapers. In 2022, the company received the UZH Entrepreneurship Fellowship to work with the UZH Remote Sensing Laboratory. In January 2023, the company was incubated at ETH as part of the ESA BIC, and they launched their answer engine for professional beta testing in April 2023. The Venture Kick funds will be used to further develop their answer engine and expand their customer base. askearth.space
Ex Nunc Intelligence: Your virtual lawyer
The Swiss legal industry has yet to experience technological disruption, resulting in archaic practices and time-consuming tasks. Despite advancements in artificial intelligence, the legal field remains largely untouched. Inefficiencies persist, such as the absence of a comprehensive and up-to-date database of laws and court decisions. This presents an opportunity for innovation to revolutionize the way legal professionals work.
The team behind Ex Nunc Intelligence consists of legal experts and data scientists with multidisciplinary and qualified backgrounds. Co-founders and co-CEOs are Kyriaki Bongard, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics, a Master in Law and Economics, a Bachelor of Law, and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in financial regulation, and Zoe Berry, a Tax Specialist with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. Laurent Aeschbach, CTO, is a Senior Data Scientist with a Master of Science in analytics (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and a Bachelor in Business Administration. Thomas Seze, the AI Architect, holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, AI and Neurosciences and a Bachelor of Science in Informatics. Remi Zeitoun, the Trainee, is completing a Bachelor in Law at the Geneva University. Ex Nunc Intelligence, a LegalTech startup, aims to transform the Swiss legal ecosystem with its unique and innovative solution. Their product utilizes Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning to tackle these challenges. By offering monthly/annual subscriptions to their virtual lawyer, they provide assistance in various legal tasks, including an up-to-date database of Swiss laws and court decisions, accurate legal answers, and automated drafting of legal opinions. The total addressable market in Switzerland is estimated at 135,191 potential clients, including lawyers, jurists, in-house counsels, compliance departments, and law students, with scalability potential internationally.
Venture Kick funds will be utilized by Ex Nunc Intelligence to implement their hiring plan, focusing on data scientists and NLP specialists. The funds will support the development of their product module by module, testing with Beta users before releasing each module to the market. exnuncintelligence.ch