Luminate NY Announces Cohort II Finalists

Empire State Development (ESD) has announced the 10 companies selected to take part in the second cohort of New York state’s Luminate NY accelerator competition.

The finalists selected include optics, photonics, and imaging startups that were chosen after pitching their innovative ideas to an advisory panel composed of industry experts at the Luminate NY Lightning Awards in the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House.

Each company will receive an initial investment of $100,000 and will be a part of the initiative’s second cohort, which will launch in January 2019 at the newly renovated Sibley Building in downtown Rochester. The six-month program will assist the finalists with their ideas to accelerate their products to commercialization.

The Luminate NY initiative supports the selected innovators as they grow their ideas in Rochester with help from industry experts, businesses, and local universities. The program aims to assist entrepreneurs who are interested in solving challenging industry problems, including, but not limited to machine vision, inspection, biophotonics, security, surveillance, augmented and virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles. The following are the 10 selected startups:

Augmentiqs - Misgav, Israel

Circle Optics - New York, New York

Kura Tech - San Francisco, California

Lumedica Vision - Durham, North Carolina

Mango teQ LTD - Auckland, New Zealand

Neurescence - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Opalux - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Organic Robotics Lab - Syracuse, NY

Ovitz - Rochester, NY

VPG Medical, Inc. - Rochester, NY

The 10 teams will compete on Demo Day at the end of the six months, where they will vie for over $2 million in follow-on funding. Funding for the $10 million program is being provided through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative award and is being administered by Nextcorps.