For a second year running, Altada, a global provider of artificial intelligence (AI), and Tangent, Trinity College Dublin’s Ideas Workspace, announced that the 2022 Alsessor AI Accelerator Programme (Alsessor AI) will start in February 2022.
The accelerator program, which will run for five months, will award up to €250,000 by investing in the company considered to have the greatest commercial and AI potential.
Alsessor AI was co-founded in November 2020 by Altada and Tangent with a mission to support AI entrepreneurs. Throughout the five months, which is the length of the program, Altada executives and leadership from Tangent, among others, provide global early-stage AI start-ups at prototype or proof of concept phase with exposure to domain expertise, mentorship, masterclasses and workshops. After the programme, each company will present their business concept before a panel of expert judges.
“Having scaled Altada from a team of nine in November 2019 to a team of one hundred in 10 locations in 2021, we know Alsessor will take your Company to the next level, the program is designed to validate the AI technology, assess commercial viability and drive investor readiness,” said Co-founder & Chief Legal and People Officer Altada Niamh Parker. “I look forward to working with the program participants and welcome all companies who are discovering new and exciting applications of AI to apply”
Last year’s winner was Empeal, a SaaS health risk and productivity platform designed for workplaces and health care practitioners. The company received an award of €250,000 to further support the growth of its technological capabilities and business operations.
Sohini De, the founder of Empeal, said Alsessor had been “an amazing experience, it is very intense but that means it helps you not only get product and customer ready but also gives you practical experience that the participating companies need at their current stages. We will be spending the money to bring our AI development to the next level with scaling, security, automation and big data analytics in mind.
“Empeal is at a stage now where we are 100 per cent focussed on scaling and execution with very big projects at hand. Just from our existing pipeline’s probability adjusted potential, we arrive at a serviceable obtainable market of €52.5mn.” added Sohini and concluded, “We will be spending the money to bring our AI development to the next level with scaling, security, automation and big data analytics in mind. We will make a few key hires, especially in AI, customer success and operations, who will help us execute our growth plans. We are also going for patent protection for our proprietary technology PARE (a Prescriptive AI Recommender Engine), ISO and other regulatory certifications. Because Empeal’s customisable platform supports multiple therapeutic areas, we want to make sure Empeal platform is fully compliant, so some of the funding will go towards those expenses as well.”
Ken Finnegan, Tangent’s CEO, Trinity’s Ideas Workspace says, “The value and benefit for early-stage startups participating in this world-class accelerator are enormous. The selected teams will have access to funding, the best minds across industry and academia to progress their organisation and also access to a network of supports. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we work and live, Tangent is proud to drive and support the next generation of cutting-edge companies.”