AI, medical devices and sports tech startups land in NextFab’s accelerator

The spring cohort of makerspace NextFab’s RAPID accelerator program, which connects hardware startups with resources, includes companies in the artificial intelligence, medical devices, clean tech and sports tech spaces.

The program, first launched in 2016, gives companies a $25,000 seed investment to develop their products, mentorship, access to potential follow-on funding, and access to its makerspaces in Philadelphia and Delaware.

Here’s the lineup of companies:

• Deepwave Digital: Using artificial intelligence and deep learning in the wireless systems and radio frequency signals space.
• Pression: An athletics wearable that promises to boost performance.
• Outland Analytics: A platform that tracks illegal logging in a bid to protect forests.
• SOLUtion: Developing an autoinjector device aimed at adrenal insufficiency patients.
• H2Only: Making an ion selective purification technology to cost effectively treat contaminated and saline water.

“The large number of applications, their higher quality, and the growing capabilities of NextFab’s product development team led us to the decision to invest in 5 startups this time,” said Todor Raykov, NextFab’s venture services manager. “Typically, we work with only 4 teams per cohort or a total of 8 per year, but the demand for a program like ours is growing and we have the capacity to meet it and assist more entrepreneurs to commercialize their technologies in Philly. We would like to further expand this number in the future.”

Last year, the makerspace launched a follow-on fund to invest in companies that graduate from its accelerator program.

Earlier this month, NextFab-based Augean Robotics, makers of a full-stack robotics platform for the farming industry and graduates from the RAPID accelerator, raised a $1.5 million seed round to grow its staff and scale the deployment of its technology.