Guest blog from Katy Guthrie, AI Accelerator Programme Manager at Edinburgh Innovations

On a beautiful sunny September day, we launched cohort 6 of The University of Edinburgh’s AI Accelerator. Founders from the 12 participating companies attended the welcome day in the Bayes Centre. As well as providing a bit of orientation on what to expect from the programme, they got to meet each other for the first time – the peer group is an important aspect of the programme. The welcome day was also a great opportunity to introduce them to the Bayes Centre community and ecosystem, so we ended the day with a networking drinks reception – always my favourite bit!

The selection exercise this time round was very competitive with 124 applications from across the world. Our new cohort is certainly an international bunch with companies from Thailand, USA, London and even as far afield as Stirling!

Although the programme is open to companies from anywhere, two of our new cohort - Danu Robotics and Smplicare - are alumni of the University’s first Venture Builder Incubator programme. This is our earlier stage sister programme which aims to help PhD students form companies around their research and it’s a great pipeline for the accelerator.

Programme themes

As a programme, our raison d’etre is about supporting the ethical and inclusive commercialisation of AI technology. To that end, our selection process was centred on three broad themes – Climate Change, Health and the intentionally broad term “AI for good”. Our interpretation of “AI for Good” includes companies that are using AI to address social issues or are improving something about the way that AI processes work to make them more inclusive.

We have 4 companies in the “AI for Good” theme: NeuralSpace is developing Natural Language Processing (NLP) models for under-represented languages bringing the benefits of NLP to people who are currently excluded and allowing companies using NLP to access a wider market. EtiqAI’s product is targeted at software developers to help them improve transparency and minimize bias in the algorithms they’re building. The other two companies are addressing social issues: Inicio.ai use NLP to address problem debt, while Easy Rice are addressing food safety and food security with their visual assessments of rice quality and nutrition.

About the programme

And what can the founders expect from taking part in the programme? We have activities every week to focus on all aspects of growing a business from establishing your funding approach to refining your pricing strategy and how to sell. We will do a lot of 1-1 support for founders to work with expert mentors to home in on their own specific challenges.

We also have plenty of group sessions, where they can learn from their peers’ mistakes! Some founders are deeply techie and so developing business skills and understanding their customers will be important. Other founders have huge domain and business knowledge but are looking for support to beef up the AI aspects and tech stack. Lots of potential for knowledge exchange between the cohort!

As well as getting access to the facilities at Bayes Centre, we will be working with the other Data-Driven Innovation hubs to engage with their sector specialists and support from Edinburgh Earth Initiative will be useful - particularly for the ClimateTechs.

We have a couple of trips to London planned where will connect with London based investors. If you’re London-based and interested in connecting as part of one of these trips, do please get in touch. Our new cohort will also benefit from long-term delivery partners NileHQ as well many other coaches, mentors, founders, investors – our list is long!

I was particularly excited to introduce our new Entrepreneur in Residence, John Brodie. John founded Data Science consultancy Aquila Insight in 2012 which he then grew from 2 people to 200 before exiting. He will be bringing his considerable experience, network and energy to support the cohort companies and I’m really pleased to have him working with us. 

Finally, in March, we’ll have our big showcase event and planning for that is already underway!

Programme evolution

I want to end with a word on the history of the accelerator and why this new cohort is number 6. Back at the tail end of 2018, when the paint was still wet in the then brand new Bayes Centre, the “Wayra Blockchain and AI” Accelerator welcomed 10 companies into Bayes, effectively as our first cohort. In the nearly four years since, the programme has evolved somewhat. New partnership and support relationships have been established, some have waxed and waned. One thing that hasn’t changed though - the application of AI technology is still core.

Since the 2018 intake, 56 companies have taken part and the new cohort will take that number up to 68. Collectively, the last two cohorts raised over £10m in funding during the programme, so we have a great track record for our support. I’m really looking forward to getting to know the new companies better and supporting them in their endeavours to drive positive change. We certainly got off to a good start.