$8.6 million Advanced Industries Awards Accelerate 36 Colorado Start-ups

DENVER – May 20, 2021 – A Colorado company with an innovative container system technology to help eliminate the spread of varroa mites and create optimal conditions in the winter for honeybees was among 36 Colorado start-ups approved for funding as part of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT)’s Advanced Industries Accelerator Grant Program. A total of $8,567,756 was approved this grant cycle for Proof of Concept and Early-Stage Capital and Retention Grants to support Colorado’s advanced industries.

“As Colorado begins its recovery from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, support of the economic engines that are the advanced industries is more important than ever,” said  Katie Woslager Senior Manager – Advanced Industries. “These projects expand the Colorado innovation ecosystem, creating jobs, expanding industries and driving investment into the state. 

Listed below are the 36 Colorado companies that were approved to receive Proof-of-Concept and Early Stage Capital Grants for a total of $8,567,756 million. Proof-of-Concept grants are open to Colorado research universities, federal labs located in Colorado and other labs with valid technology transfer offices for pre-commercialization research and commercialization preparation. Early Stage Capital and Retention grants fund companies commercializing innovative technologies to create viable products that meet a market need and can be created or manufactured in Colorado and exported globally.

Additionally, two Colorado companies – Local News Network and Serenity App, Inc.– successfully met all of their performance milestones and were approved for a second round or “transition” funding for a total of $250,000.  

The AI Accelerator Grant program received 119 applications this grant cycle. Applications were reviewed by committees of business, technical and financial experts, as well as an industry-specific reviewer. 22 companies were invited to participate in a pitch session in May with the full AI committee. Final recommendations were approved by the Economic Development Commission on May 20, 2021. 

The next application cycle for Proof-of-Concept and Early Stage Capital and Retention Grants will open on July 1, 2021, and applications will be due September 1, 2021. 

The Advanced Industry Accelerator Programs (AIA) were created in 2013 to promote growth and sustainability in Colorado’s advanced industries by driving innovation, accelerating commercialization, encouraging public-private partnerships, increasing access to early-stage capital and creating a strong infrastructure that increases the state’s capacity to be globally competitive. AIA encompasses three distinct grant programs: Proof of Concept, Early Stage Capital and Retention, and Commercialization Infrastructure.

Proof-of-Concept and Early Stage Capital Grants:

FinGoal, Inc. –  Lafayette, CO  $250,000 –  FinGoal builds infrastructure & analytics for trusted financial brands all predicated on better understanding their individual users on a human level--what they value and what is motivating them right now. FinGoal started with Find Money which analyzes consumer credit and debit spending in order to comparison-shop every dollar they spend. That advice is white-labeled for delivery via API or FinGoal’shosted SDK within the existing digital experiences of the trusted financial brands it serves. 

Fulfilld –  Denver, CO  $250,000 - Fulfilld is THE Intelligent Warehouse Management Platform leveraging 5G ultra-wideband real-time location tracking services. Our disruptive technology and value-proposition are bringing long-overdue feature, function, and innovation to a long-underserved market segment. At a single monthly per user cost bundle (including both the Software platform and hardware), Fulfilld is upending the old-school enterprise WMS world.

Hippo Health – Boulder, CO $125,000 – Hippo Health enables convenience and quality by seeing a doctor who knows you in a matter of minutes. With Hippo Health’s platform, you can talk to your doctor and care team, but then that care team can talk with other care teams in the community. Their on-demand doctors work within your doctor's practice to enable seamless convenience and continuity of care.

InScribe Education Denver, CO $250,000 -  InScribe is a digital support platform that leverages the power of human connection, community, and artificial intelligence to connect students with the answers, resources, and individuals they need to succeed. InScribe’s unique approach has been proven to help institutions improve student outcomes, increase student retention, and reduce the cost of providing on-demand, high-quality support at every stage of the learning journey.

Link to Learn – Denver, CO $247,195 – L2L’s primary objective is to improve access, reduce costs, and enhance knowledge retention for advanced critical care skills. We have created a Mobile Cadaveric Lab and Training Support Team that delivers advanced emergency medical training anywhere within the US. We are also developing REAL-X; an immersive AR/VR learning ecosystem with challenging scenarios and machine learning-powered assessment tools that bring cadavers to life with interactive signs, symptoms, and physiology.

Rank One Computing Corporation – Denver, CO $250,000 – Rank One develops world-leading facial recognition algorithms used to solve mission-critical security issues and enhance user experiences. Rank One's algorithms deliver top-tier accuracy with 2-5x faster and 10-20x more efficient results than competitors. While competing solutions are often foreign developed, our solutions are entirely Made in the USA, allowing Rank One to establish vital trust within the US federal government, law enforcement, financial services and other verticals since 2015.

CardioScout Innovations, Inc. – Boulder, CO $250,000 - CardioScout is a minimally invasive platform for the visually directed treatment of life-threatening conditions on the surface of the beating heart. This allows for cardiac interventions that are safer, faster and more effective than current techniques.

Ceria Therapeutics, Inc. – Aurora, CO $250,000 - CTx is developing a pipeline of drug products based on a single active agent to treat inflammatory diseases with severe morbidity such as nonhealing wounds, acute lung inflammation and severe intestinal distress. The company's core technology addresses these conditions with single-administration drug products that block the underlying cause to rapidly resolve each condition. Patient benefits include the prevention of long-term drug therapy, surgery and even death.

EZaLife, LLC. – Cherry Hills Village, CO $250,000 – EZaLife, LLC is a University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus startup company. Our mission is to improve the overall health and safety of those with “simple to complex” or “short- to long-term” medical issues, by developing devices that simplify their lives, in a way that will allow them to live with dignity and greater independence.

Mosaic Biosciences, Inc.  – Boulder, CO $242,257 -   Mosaic provides experienced biopharma teams to advance challenging protein therapeutic programs from discovery through preclinical development. While the use of CROs to carry out research and development activities has substantially increased over the past 10 years, this approach is limited by traditional CROs that are only capable of carrying out discrete tasks. Mosaic’s research and development teams provide an integrated approach to therapeutic development.

New West Genetics – Fort Collins, CO  $250,000 –  New West Genetics is a plant genetics and breeding company that provides novel genetics for efficient, sustainable, large-scale production of hemp. NWG’s primary focus is on the development of high-yielding hemp cultivars carrying novel grain (seed size, protein, fatty acids) and flower (i.e. cannabinoid) traits.

Rock Immune, LLC. – Denver, CO $250,000 – Rock Immune is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of diphtheria toxin-based recombinant immunotoxins as therapeutic drugs for cancer treatment. Our long-term goal is to grow Rock Immune into a leading diphtheria toxin-based immunotoxin drug discovery and development company.

SunPath  – Louisville, CO $250,000 - SunPath is a local Colorado CleanTech startup funded by the US Department of Energy, with world-record technology to advance efficient Buildings - including Commercial, Residential, and Indoor (Controlled Environment) Agriculture. SunPath ‘solar cogeneration’ technology provides energy-hungry buildings both efficiency and generation, simultaneously: SunPath delivers concentrated sunlight deep inside buildings through skinny, flexible fiber optic cables to provide immense gains in lighting efficiency. The sun’s heat (infrared) energy is split off and converted directly into electricity more efficiently than a solar panel (while also providing heat-free lighting).

REQYRD, Inc. – Wheat Ridge, CO $250,000 –  REQYRD Inc provides U.S.-based chemical and metal recovery using a low energy, low waste process to stabilize pricing and establish circular chemical production supply chains. We are the only company focused on full-cycle management for toll processing in the U.S. for spent catalysts and superalloy manufacturing waste. Even more is our ability to process feedstock from a variety of industry segments.

Ecologic Materials, Inc. –  Lakewood, CO  $500,000 –  EMC is a Colorado-based startup whose mission is to solve the single-use plastic waste problem while building high-performing sustainable roads. Our product used in asphalt binding repurposes 3 tons of single-use plastic waste per lane per mile of road. This method is backed by 30 years of R&D at DOW Chemical. EMC solves a vexing engineering, environmental, and politically toxic plastic waste problem while accelerating the ability to deal with crumbling and costly road infrastructure.

Phase IV Engineering, Inc. – Boulder, CO  $381,000 –  Phase IV Engineering leverages 28 years of leading-edge design work to offer clients wireless industrial sensors that reduce expensive unexpected downtime and increase process efficiency. Our modular design enables us to offer tailored sensing solutions to unique industrial applications at reasonable prices. We deliver complex edge-computing products that are both sophisticated yet easy to use and fast to install.

Boulder Sterilization – Boulder, CO  $250,000 –  Boulder Sterilization Services (BSS) is solving the healthcare sterilization backlog and saving customers time and money using state-of-the-art equipment to provide “Quick Turn” sterilization services for medical device companies.

Contour Printworks, LLC.  – Longmont, CO $250,000 - CANIMAL® is reinventing canning for all craft-scale beverages. Contour Printworks is a new and unique packaging and promotion paradigm that enables brewers and other beverage companies to create and can thousands of products for the first time, and create thousands of new production and sales options for their current canned products. They offer a beautiful, cost-effective alternative to plastic-covered cans that are plaguing recycling centers all over the country.

Liberty Dynamic – Denver, CO $152,190 - Liberty Dynamic is a Veteran managed, design and manufacturing facility in Denver, Colorado. Since its founding in 2017, Liberty Dynamic’s multidisciplinary support and advisory teams have been hyper-focused on improving tactical weapons. Their multidisciplinary research and development, training and manufacturing teams are innovating and providing safer alternatives for law enforcement and military customers in both the domestic and international markets. 

Cubby Beds- Denver, CO $250,000 – 1 in 54 kids have Autism. 80% of these kids have daily sleep issues and over half have self-harm issues or run away from safe environments. The insurance reimbursable smart beds have customizable sensory inputs to help with sleep and anxiety and padding + remote monitoring to improve safety.

HiveTech Solutions, LLC – Westminster, CO $500,000 – HiveTech Solutions is a women-owned, mission-driven company that spun out of the University of Colorado Boulder. With its expertise in honeybee biology and environmental design, HiveTech Solutions has designed, built, and tested a smart container system that eliminates the spread of varroa mites and precisely manages the interior environment to match the optimal winter conditions for honeybees. Their product is a non-chemical approach to preventing mite infestation and preserving the strength of honeybee colonies during the most difficult season, winter.

Barn Owl Drone Services - Colorado Springs, CO $200,000 – Barn Owl provides drone and robotic services to help farmers secure their food supply, increase profits, and rediscover the love for the job. Barn Owl Drone Services likes to say they help farmers get more sleep and spend more time with their families. They do this through regenerative farming systems that support our farmers, our communities, and the planet.

PlanIT Geo – Arvada, CO $250,000 – Trees have an environmental and asset value. Yet 29 million trees are lost every year in U.S. cities from climate change, development, lack of care, and labor shortages. We need urban trees and access to green spaces more than ever for public health and well-being. Cities globally are adopting large-scale greening initiatives. We developed the TreePlotter™ Software Suite, a comprehensive mapping SaaS platform to maximize tree benefits through data-driven, efficient tree care operations.

Op-T, LLC.  –  Denver, CO  $250,000 – Op-T LLC is a startup biotech company located in Denver, Colorado that is developing therapeutics to control autoimmune inflammation across a range of diseases, the primary focus is type 1 diabetes (T1D), with later indications to include multiple sclerosis (MS), and atherosclerosis. The drug product was developed in the laboratory of Op-T Co-Founder, Dr. David Wagner in conjunction with CEO Charlie Henry.

Orbit Genomics, Inc.  –  Boulder, CO  $250,000 –  Orbit Genomics’ game-changing OrbiSeq™ technology platform analyzes novel genomic markers, repetitive DNA called microsatellites, that uniquely reflect not only inherited disease risk, but also risk acquired from lifestyle and environmental exposures. OrbiSeq™ can be applied to diagnose, treat and ultimately help prevent complex diseases including cancer, heart disease and neurological diseases.

Vona Oncology, LLC.  –  Aurora, CO  $250,000 – Vona Oncology is an early clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing targeted therapeutics to treat aggressive cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Ageto, LLC.  – Fort Collins, CO $250,000 – Ageto is making renewable energy work. Ageto has developed the Ageto ARC Microgrid Controller, a simple, intuitive, and operator-focused microgrid control solution. The Ageto ARC Microgrid Controller is the brains of the microgrid seamlessly integrating, optimizing, and managing diverse energy resources. ARC maximizes clean, renewable energy while ensuring the power system is stable and resilient. At Ageto, they break down the cost and complexity barriers that are currently preventing more renewable microgrid projects from moving forward. Ageto Energy -- Making Renewable Energy Simple.

AMPP Technologies  –  Lakewood, CO  $250,000 – AMPP Technologies (AMPP) is commercializing a novel Self-Terminating Etching Process (STEP) that reduces the costs of metals 3D printing by upwards of 30% - potentially saving the industry $3-4 billion/year by 2030. Their technology will help Colorado and U.S. manufacturers advance their manufacturing capabilities and make them competitive on the global market.

University of Colorado- Denver, Researcher: Nicholas Jacobsen - Denver, CO $129,975 – 3D Voxel Printing for Presurgical Planning

University of Colorado- Denver, Researcher: Srinivas Ramachandra- Denver, CO $300,000 – Evaluating and Improving Cancer Therapy with Epigenomics

University of Colorado- Denver, Researcher: Sheana Bull - Denver, CO $90,139 – Development of the COVID-19 Nudge Chatbot

Colorado School of Mines- Researcher: Mark Eberhart- Golden, CO $150,000- Development of a unique tool, called Bondalyzer, that allows users to predict a material’s mechanical properties virtually.

Colorado School of Mines- Researcher: Andy Herring- Golden, CO $150,000- Tuffbrane Membranes for Water Electrolysis Applications

Colorado School of Mines- Researcher: Jeff Squier- Golden, CO $150,000- Super resolution metrology and manipulation for Advanced Manufacturing