Following a riveting three days, the highly anticipated INVENTURE$ 2023 concluded on a high note.
The innovation experience brought together leading minds, industry leaders, angel investors, and venture capitalists, boasting an impressive attendance of over 3,000 participants, along with an additional global digital audience.
Hosted by Alberta Innovates, the event, themed “Innovation Overdrive,” spanned eight distinctive streams: Accelerating Growth, Ag / Food tech, Building Better, Clean tech, Computing Infinity, Health Innovation, Future of Work, and The Metaverse. These sessions offered participants rich insights and deeper learning opportunities across emerging and transforming industries.
A record number of attendees heard from 322 experts in 150 sessions. The speakers’ lineup included a diverse roster of experts, such as Matt Anderson-Baron, co-founder of Future Fields; Dr. Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute; Matthew Ball, managing partner of EpyllionCo; Michio Kaku, a theoretical physics expert from City University of New York; and Duncan Wardle, a former senior executive at Disney.
“Inventures 2023 was our most successful event yet,” stated Alberta Innovates chief executive Laura Kilcrease. “Our attendance numbers were up, the programming covered more tracks than ever, and that all contributed to creating positive collisions between entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, academics, and policymakers.”
The conference featured various pitch competitions.
In the international startup pitch contest, 30 startups showcased their innovative ideas to a panel of venture capitalist judges, with six startups securing $10,000 prizes and free registration to Inventures 2024. The winners included Delphi Technology Group, Teora PTE Ltd., GlüxKind Technologies, Urban Machine, Kello Inclusive, and Vistim Labs, each representing different industry sectors.
The Ascent pitch competition saw TurnCO2, LEWK, and BioCCM, three top University of Calgary innovators, sharing over $40,000 in cash to support the commercialization of their products or services.
Meanwhile, the HerStory 2023 pitch competition, co-hosted by The 51 and Alberta Innovates, celebrated the innovative efforts of five female entrepreneurs: Kelsie Williams of UpRow, Aamna Zia of Fuse Financial, Hoda Soboh of Nyah Health, Liz MacRae of Village Wellth, and Leilani Mustillo of Animal Healthlink.
Inventures 2023 also engaged young talents through a student pitch competition, featuring Quack, Wire Financial, and Threshold UAV from Alberta, Canada.
The fifth edition of INVENTURE$ is set for May 2024, promising another opportunity to drive innovation, collaboration, and positive change on a global scale.
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