Bristol, 27 April 2023 – QantX is proud to announce three new recipients of the 2023 Blavatnik Prize for Innovation. This prestigious £1m prize fund provides non-dilutive prizes to unlock the commercialisation of innovations across sustainability, healthcare, and AI.
The three 2023 Blavatnik Prize for Innovation awardees will each receive up to £50,000 and mentorship from the QantX team to support their development and progress toward societal and economic impact.
SmartLight.AI
SmartLight.AI is an innovative Bristol-based startup developing smart decentralised solutions to solve lighting management challenges in the urban environment. Their patented solution employs machine vision and AI in a device that can be placed easily onto a street light and determine when and if the light is needed to be switched on or off.
Founder, Will Tulloch came up with the solution during the pandemic, noticing that the street light outside his window was on constantly during the night, and considered the waste of energy. Traditionally, street lighting is controlled centrally with minimal adaptability to actual usage. SmartLight.AI provides a cheap solution for autonomous adaptable lighting that can save cities up to 90% of their lighting energy costs.
There are 6.5m publicly operated streetlights in the UK, SmartLight.AI will start with an initial pilot run of 1,000 units in Hull, funded by the Blavatnik Prize for Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund via the West of England Combined Authority (WECA).
CDotBio
CDotBio is an early-stage biotech spinout from the University of Bristol. Their mission is to provide cheaper, faster, safer and more powerful ways to protect and adapt crops in response to external pressures such as drought or heatwaves. Critically their approach is not genetic modification but instead causes a transient gene expression in crops that can be delivered at any point in the lifecycle
Based on research by Professor Carman Galan and Dr Heather Whitney at the University of Bristol, CDotBio’s technology revolves around functionalised carbon nanodots allowing for easy delivery of nucleic acids into plant cells. Dr Teodoro Garcia Millan, CEO, has been researching the technology for half a decade and is now leading the company toward commercialisation.
The prize funds will be used to develop the technology and establish a license with growers focussing on doubling the fresh lifetime of cut flowers.
Light Trace Photonics
Light Trace Photonics, co-founded by University of Bristol Alumni Dr Jake Biele (CEO) and Dr Dominic Sulway (CTO), is a startup pioneering integrated photonics – microchips capable of routing and manipulating light. Their mission is to use photonic chips to unlock the full potential of photonics in providing efficient, deployable solutions to major issues including the climate crisis, mounting NHS pressures and lagging productivity.
The industry is currently facing a skills shortage which threatens the commercialisation of technologies that hold great promise for tackling these issues. This prize will help fund the development of Light Trace Photonics’ first product, an educational device that uses photonic chips to tackle this shortage.
Akin to the Raspberry Pi, Light Trace Photonics’ device will bring previously complex experimentation out of the lab and into the classroom where students can assemble their own photonic systems whilst learning the basics of how to program photonic chips.
Richard Haycock, CEO of QantX – “The Blavatnik Prize for Innovation identifies and rewards outstanding world-changing ideas and founders with critically needed capital to leverage exponential growth. All three awardees have demonstrated the potential for significant global impact and we are delighted to support them with a prize”.
The Blavantik Prize for Innovation is open for applications until 17 May 2023. For more information, please visit online.
About QantX
QantX is a leading venture capital firm focused on software innovation with a mission to support and accelerate the growth of early-stage startups that leverage cutting-edge technologies to create a positive impact on society. QantX invests in groundbreaking companies across industries, providing them with the capital, mentorship, and resources they need to succeed.
For more information, visit QantX.
About the Blavatnik Prize for Innovation
The Blavatnik Prize for Innovation is supported by a generous donation from Access Industries, founded by Sir Leonard Blavatnik. Access owns strategic and diversified investments around the world in media and entertainment, natural resources and commodities, real estate, venture capital, and biotechnology. Sir Leonard is a global industrialist and philanthropist with over 35 years of experience in deploying long-term capital and transforming companies into market leaders.
A dual U.S. and UK citizen, Sir Leonard was knighted in 2017 for services to philanthropy. Notable donations by Sir Leonard’s Blavatnik Family Foundation include £75 million to the University of Oxford to establish the Blavatnik School of Government and hundreds of millions of dollars to Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Tel Aviv, and other major universities to promote scientific research and discovery.
Sir Leonard’s ongoing efforts to support innovation and science is further evidenced by the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, the largest unrestricted prize ever created for early-career scientists. The Blavatnik Prize for Innovation furthers this goal by enabling projects that unlock the commercialisation of scientific and technological discoveries.