Startups

From crypto trading and home workouts to EV batteries and microLED displays, CES’ Taiwan startups cover a wide range of tech

Comment

Aerial view of Taipei's cityscape
Image Credits: GoranQ (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

For the past three years, the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has brought startups to CES. This year, its virtual pavilion, organized with Taiwan Tech Arena, is hosting 100 startups, organized into five categories: Smart Living, Tech for Good, Cybersecurity and Cloud, Healthcare and Wellness, and Mobility Tech. During two press events, 24 startups previewed their CES presentations, giving a sneak peek at what the pavilion will showcase.

In a press conference on Sunday, MOST’s head, Wu Tsung-tsong, said the pavilion’s goal is to help startups expand into more markets and find international investors. “Investing in Taiwanese startups means investing in Taiwan,” he added.

Startups that presented during Taiwan Tech Arena’s press conference on Sunday:

All Good Energy provides an open platform for electric vehicle batteries that enables IoT functionality and constant communication with the cloud. This allows users to monitor battery performance and how much charge is left. Its open platform provides access to battery data through APIs and has been integrated into cargo fleets in Taiwan.

Aiphas says on average, nurses need to take care of nine patients at once, answering dozens of calls. The startup makes a smart ward solution, with a plug and play smart nurse call system called Aipha Call that helps them respond faster. Another feature, called Aipha-Eye, detects emergencies like fires or falls. The system can be deployed in five days. Aiphas has developed relationships with six top hospitals in Taiwan and is currently used in National Taiwan University Hospital’s Bei-Hu Branch.

Crypto-Arsenal is a cloud-based automatic crypto trading platform that lets users develop, backtest, simulate and live-trade their algorithmic trading strategies. To reduce trader risk, it uses smart contracts on the blockchain so traders only need to pay developers when they get profits. The platform is in public beta, with 700 users so far, who have made $10,000 USD in profit in three trading competitions. Crypto-Arsenal is partnered with National Taiwan University and sponsored by Binance, and will officially launch in the second quarter of 2021.

Koup makes performance wear with the aim of “circularity” — in other words, it uses recycled materials that can be recycled back into usable material in the future. Koup launched on Kickstarter with the Cinnamon shirt. Each one uses material from eight plastic bottles that is turned into pellets before being spun into fiber with cinnamon as a natural antimicrobial to eliminate order.

Uniigym provides an interactive fitness service with more than 1,000 fitness classes that can be streamed online, through smart TVs or internet set-top boxes, and community features. It offers two products: Uniihome, fitness classes for home workouts, and Uniicube, which creates virtual environments with a projector. Currently available in Taiwan, it will launch internationally this year.

Startups that previewed during a keynote on Tuesday

Mobility

3Drens is a data-driven IoT platform for commercial fleet owners, including logistics and vehicle rental. It enables asset management, preventative maintenance, driver behavior optimization and itinerary management. The platform is customizable and includes open data to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

GenkiTek offers a driver-monitoring system that can detect potential distractions like eating, drinking or phone calls and send alerts to companies and drivers to reduce accidents. It has collected hundreds of thousands of driver images to train its AI system’s deep neural net for analyzing driver behavior.

Dartrays’ WHUD II is a windshield HUD (head-up display) with a patented optical path design. It can project images up to two to three meters, and is small enough to be installed as an after-market device. It projects information to help drivers see information without taking their eyes off the road.

Spatial Topology Technology develops location tech for mobile. It claims to have the largest map pool for indoor positioning in the e-commerce industry. Its solutions help brands develop their offline-to-online strategies, since many people go window shopping offline, checking out products before buying them online. The platform analyzes repeating customer behavior and includes brand engagement tools like geotargeted reward programs.

Healthcare and wellness

CloudMed makes iCare, an 8-in-1 sensor that can detect eight biometrics, including body age, heart rate, pulse wave transit time, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, oxygen saturation and tiredness and stress levels, using PPG optical sensors and ECG electrodes.

OFLO is a cloud-based walkie-talkie created for frontline workers that can’t look at screens while doing their jobs. OFLO is what the company describes as the world’s first dual-bone conduction wearable device, and unlike traditional walkie talkies, covers longer distances, has unlimited channels and is connected to software with auto-logging, transcription and cross-platform communication features.

Pulxion is a “personalized mobile hospital” that detects the warning signs of strokes. Meant as a first-line screening device for patients, it uses motion analysis, monitors pulses and performs neck scans to gauge a user’s risk of stroke.

Cybersecurity and Cloud Solutions

ArcRan’s iSecV box is a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) cybersecurity solution that monitors radio frequency signals, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, cellular V2X and dedicated short-range communications to detect abnormal behavior. It gives warnings if anything is amiss, and is meant to make smart cities safer without affecting existing infrastructure.

Avalanche Computing offers a performance-optimized workflow for AI experts at SMEs, helping them redesign algorithms and deploy AI models. It can train AI models in parallel or distributed models on multiple GPUs.

I.X R2’s product is a wireless secure e-badge with a cryptokey inside, combining physical keys and software. The 3-in-1 badge features log-in authentication, data encryption and door entrance. Users own their cryptokeys, so they can manage door entrances and security with one platform.

Tresl is an e-commerce analytics platform for brands on Shopify, designed to give them the same kind of insight as larger retailers so they can increase repeat revenue. It features pre-built segmentation and actionable insights.

Tech for Good

Ganzin is an AI-based eye tracking solution for integration into AR/VR devices and smart glasses. The lightweight, compact module is powered by Qualcomm XR or Ganzin’s in-house processor.

NUWA Robotics Platform’s Kebbi Air is an AI-based social robot that comes with a development platform to let brands create interactive content for it. Aimed at kids, it is currently used in 600 schools in Taiwan for STEAM and language education. The robot recognizes faces, objects, gestures, sound sources, voice and environmental context.

PlayNitride’s microLED displays boosts 60% transparency and can be used for automotive displays, wearable devices and monitors.

Honeywld’s MyGuardian is a wearable for automated fall alerts. It is meant to help nurses and personal assistants working with elderly people in nursing homes, care centers or hospitals provide 24-hour monitoring.

Smart Living

FiduciaEdge helps smart cities keep data private by enhancing the security level of edge devices. Use cases include smart city transportation systems and manufacturing.

Eleclean‘s Share disinfectant devices feature replaceable bottles that turn water into disinfectant with hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radicals. The bottles are paired with an intelligent control base and have built-in NFC so users can check the disinfectant’s expiration date or how many times it can still be used by scanning it with a smartphone app.

Goama allows developers to integrate casual e-sport games into their apps to boost engagement, reduce customer acquisition costs and increase brand awareness.

Interxie creates energy storage systems for homes that integrate with new or existing renewable energy systems to manage power, avoid outages and adjust energy power usage. It also can help reduce energy costs by integrating with battery systems.

More TechCrunch

Audio streaming service TuneIn is teaming up with Discord to bring free live radio to the platform. This is TuneIn’s first collaboration with a social platform and one that is…

Discord and TuneIn partner to bring live radio to the social platform

The early victors in the AI gold rush are selling the picks and shovels needed to develop and apply artificial intelligence. Just take a look at data-labeling startup Scale AI…

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is coming to Disrupt 2024

Try to imagine the number of parts that go into making a rocket engine. Now imagine requesting and comparing quotes for each of those parts, getting approvals to purchase the…

Engineer brothers found Forge to modernize hardware procurement

Raspberry Pi has released a $70 AI extension kit with a neural network inference accelerator that can be used for local inferencing, for the Raspberry Pi 5.

Raspberry Pi partners with Hailo for its AI extension kit

When Stacklet’s founders, Travis Stanfield and Kapil Thangavelu, came out of Capital One in 2020 to launch their startup, most companies weren’t all that concerned with constraining cloud costs. But…

Stacklet sees demand grow as companies take cloud cost control more seriously

Fivetran’s Managed Data Lake Service aims to remove the repetitive work of managing data lakes.

Fivetran launches a managed data lake service

Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both spent decades in search discovery, but it was while working at Pinterest that they began trying to understand how to use search engines to…

How a couple of former Pinterest search experts caught Biz Stone’s attention

GetWhy helps businesses carry out market studies and extract insights from video-based interviews using AI.

GetWhy, a market research AI platform that extracts insights from video interviews, raises $34.5M

AI-powered virtual physical therapy platform Sword Health has seen its valuation soar 50% to $3 billion.

Sword Health raises $130 million and its valuation soars to $3 billion

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.

WndrCo officially gets into venture capital with fresh $460M across two funds

The startup targets the middle ground between platforms that offer rigid templates, and those that facilitate a full-control approach.

Storyblok raises $80M to add more AI to its ‘headless’ CMS aimed at non-technical people

The startup has been pursuing a ground-up redesign of a well-understood technology.

‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen

Sékr, a startup that offers a mobile app for outdoor enthusiasts and campers, is launching a new AI tool for planning road trips. The new tool, called Copilot, is available…

Travel app Sékr can plan your next road trip with its new AI tool

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has been down for several users across the globe for the last few hours.

OpenAI fixes the issue that caused ChatGPT outage for several hours

Microsoft’s education-focused flavor of its cloud productivity suite, Microsoft 365 Education, is facing investigation in the European Union. Privacy rights non-profit noyb has just lodged two complaints with Austria’s data…

Microsoft hit with EU privacy complaints over schools’ use of 365 Education suite

Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get…

Samara is accelerating the energy transition in Spain one solar panel at a time

Featured Article

DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.

17 hours ago
DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.

Watch Apple kick off WWDC 2024 right here

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Unfortunately, Boeing’s Starliner launch was delayed yet again, this time due to issues with one of the three redundant computers used by United…

TechCrunch Space: China’s victory

The court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.

An appeals court rules that VC Fearless Fund cannot issue grants to Black women, but the fight continues

Instagram Threads is rolling out the ability for users to signal which sort of posts they wanted to see more or less of by swiping.

You can now customize your For You feed on Threads using swipes

The Japanese billionaire who commissioned SpaceX for a private mission around the moon on a Starship rocket has abruptly canceled the project, citing ongoing uncertainties around when the launch vehicle…

Japanese billionaire pulls plug on private ‘dearMoon’ lunar Starship mission

Malicious actors are abusing generative AI music tools to create homophobic, racist, and propagandic songs — and publishing guides instructing others how to do so. According to ActiveFence, a service…

People are using AI music generators to create hateful songs

As WWDC 2024 nears, all sorts of rumors and leaks have emerged about what iOS 18 and its AI-powered apps and features have in store.

What to expect from Apple’s AI-powered iOS 18 at WWDC

Dallas is the second city that Cruise is easing its way back into after pulling its entire U.S. fleet late last year.

GM’s Cruise is testing robotaxis in Dallas again

Featured Article

After raising $100M, AI fintech LoanSnap is being sued, fined, evicted

The company has been sued by at least seven creditors, including Wells Fargo.

22 hours ago
After raising $100M, AI fintech LoanSnap is being sued, fined, evicted

Featured Article

Sonos Ace review: A high-priced contender

The Ace are a contender in a crowded market, but they’re still in search of that magic bullet to truly let them stand out from the pack.

22 hours ago
Sonos Ace review: A high-priced contender

The change would see Instagram becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos.

Instagram confirms test of ‘unskippable’ ads

Commerce platform Shopify has acquired Checkout Blocks, allowing Shopify Plus merchants to make no-code customizations in their checkout to enhance customer experience and potentially boost sales.  Checkout Blocks, which debuted…

Shopify acquires Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app

After the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party app stores for iOS in Europe, several developers have launched alternative stores, like the AltStore and MacPaw’s Setapp (currently…

Aptoide launches its alternative iOS game store in the EU