Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

A total of 589 start-ups applied to pitch at next month’s South by Southwest^® (SXSW) Conference and Festivals announced in Austin, TX, and 45 were selected. It’s the 17^th annual SXSW Pitch event presented by KPMG, happening March 8 – 9 at the Hilton Austin Downtown during the Start-ups Track of the conference.

Thirteen of the 45 are international, at least six are from Texas, and the closest presenter to the Volunteer State is Airtrek Robotics in Covington, KY. The finalists of the 2025 SXSW Pitch event in each category are:

1. AgTech & Food: Azul Biotechnologies, Inc. (Brooklyn, NY); Earnest Agriculture (Rantoul, IL); Entomal Biotech (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); Farmish, Inc. (Grand Rapids, MI); Knead Technologies (Calgary, Canada).
2. Enterprise, Smart Data, FinTech & Future of Work: Fazeshift (San Francisco, CA); Launch Ahead (Tulsa, OK); Polygraf AI (Austin, TX); Safebooks Inc. (San Francisco, CA); and Springboards (Sydney, Australia).
3. Entertainment, Media, Sports & Content: HAND (Human & Digital) (Brooklyn, NY); Human Native AI (London, England); NeuralGarage (Bangalore, India); Vobble (Bengaluru, India); and ZIbra AI (Kyiv, Ukraine).
4. HealthTech, MedTech, BioTech & Accessibility: Glidance (Seattle, WA); Intero Biosystems Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI); NerView Surgical Inc.(Hamilton, Canada); Somnair Inc. (Baltimore, MD); and Vocxi Health (Arden Hills, MN).
5. Innovative World Tech: ChakraTech (San Diego, CA); Expanso (Seattle, WA); Fast Sense Ltd (Tel Aviv, Israel); We Hear You (St. Louis, MO); and Xatoms (Toronto, Canada).
6. Robotics, Web3, Voice and Extended Reality: Airtrek Robotics (Covington, KY); Contoro (Austin, TX); Fluid Reality (Chicago, IL); MUSE Inc. (Chuo-Ku, Japan); and Wubble.ai (Singapore).
7. Security, GovTech & Space: Charter (Los Angeles, CA); Hyphen Innovations LLC (Dayton, OH); Lifeknight, Inc. (Traverse City, MI); Little Place Labs Inc. (Houston, TX); and Verisoul (Austin, TX).
8. Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability: Carbon Negative Solutions (Portland, OR); Helix Earth (Houston, TX); Importal (Austin, TX); SLY (San Francisco, CA); and Tern AI (Austin, TX).
9. Student Start-ups: MabLab (Boston, MA); MyEndoscope (Tokyo, Japan); The Dev Difference (Chicago, IL); The Flossy Organization(Brooklyn, NY); and Vocadian (Boston, MA).

As part of SXSW, Launch Tennessee will again partner with several economic development organizations to host the Tennessee House at the Electric Shuffle venue from March 7 through 9. Four cities will showcase their start-ups starting with Knoxville on March 7, Chattanooga and Nashville on March 8, and Memphis on March 9.

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