Luminate NY Names Companies in Seventh Cohort

Empire State Development has named the 10 companies selected to participate in round seven of the Luminate NY accelerator program, investment fund, and competition. Each finalist will receive an initial investment of $100,000 and will have the chance to compete for up to $2 million in follow-on funding upon completion of the program.

The cohort will begin on April 8, 2024, and conclude in September.

To date, Luminate has invested $18 million in 63 startups. The companies in the portfolio have raised an additional $260.1 million and now share a net worth of $675 million. Courtesy of Luminate.

The selected companies:

AI Optics, Inc., developer of a handheld imaging technology that integrates AI to provide a new standard of care for disease screening, starting with preventing vision loss.

CureVision is working on automatic, rapid 3D wound measurement, analysis, and reporting for hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory and home care.

Enlipsium is creating advanced nanomaterials for future X-ray imaging devices, anti-counterfeiting, and self-cleaning coatings.

iLoF (Intelligent Lab on Fiber) is providing non-invasive tracking, screening, and stratification for drug discovery using a cloud-based library of optical fingerprints, powered by photonics and AI.

Nicslab, Inc. is a fabless chip company developing electronics and photonics integrated circuits for future optical solutions in data centers, AI, instrumentation, and quantum computing.

Photosynthetic is developing a new manufacturing method enabling complex 3D geometries to be produced at mass-production speeds while retaining sub-micron feature sizes.

Q-Block Computing is making fault-tolerant quantum devices for advanced computation, communication, and sensing.

SaferStreet Solutions is working on traffic safety devices that target unsafe driving behavior and collect data to help communities reduce speeding, distracted driving, car crashes, and lack of seat belt usage.

SeeTrue Technologies is providing advanced eye tracking technology featuring a robust sensing solution for use in health care, augmented and virtual reality, and industry applications.

VoxelSensors is developing a single-photon active event sensor that enables power-efficient and intuitive interaction for spatial interfaces and mobile extended reality (XR).

The companies were selected from a pool of 137 applications sent from 25 different countries, Luminate said. Since its inception, Luminate has invested $18 million in 63 startups. Funding for the program, which is administered by NextCorps, is provided through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative.

Companies in the Luminate portfolio have raised an additional $260.1 million and now share an estimated net worth of $675 million. Many of the companies are establishing U.S. operations or some aspect of research and manufacturing in the Rochester region.