Cornell Tech Announces Largest Cohort to Date of New Startups on Campus for Fall 2024

Cornell Tech today announced the newest cohort of 13 startup companies that will enter its established Runway incubator program this September. The program is run by the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute on the Cornell Tech campus and will welcome its largest cohort since the annual program began in 2014.

The 13 teams include eight Ph.D. founders, selected from 358 applications received this year for the Runway Startup Postdoc Program, and five “Spinout” teams, which are made up of 2024 Cornell Tech graduates who each won a $100,000 Start-Up Award at the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year.

Founders who participate in the program come from academic backgrounds and are focused on accelerating their young companies under the guidance of Cornell Tech faculty and advisors. To date, the program has launched more than 100 startups, including baby sleep monitor Nanit, real estate construction intelligence platform OnsiteIQ and infectious disease diagnostic Biotia. In total, the companies launched from the Runway Startups program have a valuation of more than $660 million and have created more than 500 new jobs in New York City.

Runway participants come to the Institute with early stage ideas and potential markets for their product(s). To help launch their startups and propel them into careers in the tech industry, they receive a package valued up to $325,000 for two years that includes a salary, a research budget, workspace on campus, and IP registration and use, as well as mentorship from academic and business experts in fields ranging from connective media, health technology, security and privacy, and computer vision.

“Runway is a proven catalyst for New York’s tech ecosystem. It creates entrepreneurship opportunities beyond those traditionally offered at universities and helps founders address the roots of real world issues and tackle them head on,” said Fernando Gómez-Baquero, Director of the Runway Startup Postdoc and the Spinout Programs at Cornell Tech. “The proposals from this year’s cohort have the potential to join alumni companies as they grow into fully realized startups, driving economic development, job growth, and New York’s leadership in innovation for years to come.”

Runway is part business school, part research institution, and part startup incubator. It helps tech founders translate their academic skills and mindset into entrepreneurial ventures. The incoming cohort plans to translate their ideas into startups utilizing tech, engineering and artificial intelligence, solving problems in fields ranging from healthcare to finance. The selected companies include:

• Cipher, a marketplace that facilitates music licensing deals by connecting businesses to the biggest players of the music industry, tracking negotiations, and automating payments and licensing agreements.
• Iriscience, integrating AR and VR into slit lamps, enabling remote eye examinations along with AI-assisted user interface to allow ophthalmologists and primary care providers to diagnose and treat patients in family clinics and underserved areas.
• MercuryVote, a marketplace/auction house that provides a way for large and small retail investors to sell their unused and undervalued proxy votes for corporate elections, enabling activist investors to purchase the proxy votes to impact boards and proposals at the next corporate election.
• MyophonX, a device consists of cutaneous electrodes embedded in a thin, flexible film, which capture Electromyography (EMG) signals from facial articulatory muscles. These signals are then processed by ANNs to produce speech, which can be transmitted via Bluetooth to an external device such as a phone, speaker, or headset and allow a person without a voice to speak.
• mPulse-O2, a platform that enables accurate measurement of blood oxygen level and aims to transform the pulse oximetry technology by overcoming and changing the lack of inclusivity in design and validation of biomedical devices.
• Onda Labs, addressing key challenges in water management, assisting utilities in boosting their revenue and improving overall efficiency by leveraging AI technologies.
• Prendo, a digital platform for endometriosis that enables tracking patients’ symptoms individually on a daily basis and identifying the unique cyclic patterns and correlations of each symptom by generating “monthly symptom maps” and predicting the onset of symptoms.
• PsyFlo, a platform that enables personalized, collaborative care for integrated behavioral health settings.
• RapidReview, a platform that uses machine learning to accelerate research productivity by building tools that understand documents and help researchers navigate thousands of academic papers for literature review.
• SensVita, a company that develops non-invasive sensors for wearable and furniture-integrated heart and lung monitoring by prioritizing no skin contact and broad application to clinical, at-home, and veterinary monitoring applications.
• Simulacrum, an AI software venture that allows enterprises and institutions to make effective operational decisions in complex markets by providing them with behavioral market models learned from data to accurately predict future economic trends.
• Vinci AI, a new ad format that combines the scale of interruptive ads and the engagement of in-video sponsored ads and that enables brands and creators to source sponsorship deals and automatically inserts brand advertisements into the background of creator videos.
• WAVED Medical LLC, a medical software company developing technology that enhances breast cancer screening by using proprietary biophysical measurements that identifies pre-cancerous “at-risk” dense breast tissue most likely to progress to life-threatening disease.

Applications for the next cohort of Runway Startups, to begin in September 2025, will open on October 15, 2024 and close on February 15, 2025. For more information, go to https://tech.cornell.edu/programs/phd/startup-postdocs/