GENIUS NY Program Builds on Progress of CNY Rising - The Region's Comprehensive Strategy to Create Good Jobs and Attract Businesses to Central New York
Airtonomy of North Dakota Wins $1 Million Grand Prize
Four Additional Finalists Each Receive $500,000
Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that Airtonomy, of Grand Forks, North Dakota, is the $1 million grand prize winner of round five of the GENIUS NY accelerator competition. The year-long GENIUS NY program is the world's largest business competition focused on unmanned systems, cross-connected platforms and other technology-based sectors. Airial Robotics of Hamburg, Germany, CarScanner of Krakow, Poland, Circle Optics of Rochester, NY and WindShape of Geneva, Switzerland were each awarded investments of $500,000 following the round five virtual pitch event. The teams will use these investments to continue to accelerate their growth and expand their presence in the region. To date, New York State has invested $25 million in GENIUS NY over five rounds of the competition. GENIUS NY participants are required to operate their business in Central New York for at least one year.
"The GENIUS NY competition continues to transform the landscape of Central New York by attracting the next generation of innovative entrepreneurs from around the world to the region," Governor Hochul said, "Our continued investment in unmanned aerial system businesses is helping to ensure that New York remains the leader in this important industry and brings quality jobs and economic growth to Central New York."
The GENIUS NY program, which is administered by CenterState CEO's Tech Garden in Syracuse, offers participants incubator space, company resources, programming and mentoring. Since 2017, GENIUS NY companies have raised more than $73.5 million in follow-on funding and have created 60 jobs in the region. The advancement of the GENIUS NY program builds on the progress of CNY Rising, the region's award-winning strategic plan to revitalize communities and grow the economy.
Grand prize winner Airtonomy, which was started in 2018 and has 25 employees, enables anyone to collect data uniformly using autonomous vehicles or drones. It makes complex flight as easy as pushing a button so that a wind technician, security guard or power lineman can operate a drone safely and consistently, and collect data uniformly. This means data collected can be processed automatically using machine learning and turned into actionable intelligence for an organization.