SXSW announces 2025 pitch competition finalists

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Photo: Pixabay

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals has announced the finalists for the 17th annual SXSW Pitch event presented by KPMG, which takes place March 8 and 9 at the Hilton Austin Downtown during the Startups Track of the SXSW Conference.

The 2025 event will present 45 companies, selected by the SXSW Pitch advisory board out of 589 applications, within nine categories, to a panel of industry experts, including media professionals, venture capital investors and angel investors.

“As someone who has had the honor of being involved with SXSW Pitch for the last 17 years, I have had the pleasure of helping empower and celebrate many innovative ideas and companies,” said SXSW Pitch Event producer Chris Valentine.

“2025 is a particularly exciting year for startups, given recent technological advances and the AI revolution, and we are looking forward to showcasing and propelling the companies leading the next generation of innovation across the globe.”

The 45 participating companies will present their innovations at the 2025 Award Ceremony.

Of the participating companies, one will be named winner per category, with the most up-and-coming startup receiving the Best In Show award.

This year’s event will feature entrepreneurs representing the US, Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore, among others.

The finalists of the 2025 SXSW Pitch include:

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)

Enterprise, Smart Data, FinTech & Future of Work: Fazeshift (San Francisco, CA); Launch Ahead (Tulsa, OK); Polygraf AI (Austin, TX); Safebooks Inc. (San Francisco, CA); Springboards (Sydney, Australia)

HealthTech, MedTech, BioTech & Accessibility: Glidance (Seattle, WA); Intero Biosystems Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI); NerView Surgical Inc. (Hamilton, Canada); Somnair Inc. (Baltimore, MD); Vocxi Health (Arden Hills, MN)

Innovative World Tech: ChakraTech (San Diego, CA); Expanso (Seattle, WA); Fast Sense Ltd (Tel Aviv, Israel); We Hear You (St. Louis, MO); Xatoms (Toronto, Canada)

Robotics, Web3, Voice & Extended Reality: Airtrek Robotics (Covington, KY); Contoro (Austin, TX); Fluid Reality (Chicago, IL); MUSE Inc. (Chuo-Ku, Japan); Wubble.ai (Singapore)

Security, GovTech & Space: Charter (Los Angeles, CA); Hyphen Innovations LLC (Dayton, OH); Lifeknight, Inc. (Traverse City, MI); Little Place Labs Inc. (Houston, TX); Verisoul (Austin, TX)

Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability: Carbon Negative Solutions (Portland, OR); Helix Earth (Houston, TX); Importal (Austin, TX); SLY (San Francisco, CA); Tern AI (Austin, TX)

Other categories include Entertainment, Media, Sports & Content; and Student Startups.

Since the program debuted in 2009, SXSW Pitch finalists have raised more than $23.2bn in funding. 17% of these SXSW Pitch finalists have been acquired by industry giants such as Google, British Telecom, Huffington Post, Apple, Live Nation, OpenTable, Meta, Michelin, Constant Contact, and Harmon. SXSW Pitch startups also include Klout, ICON, Hipmunk, Wildfire, Tubemogul, Siri, Foodspotting and Tango.

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Jim Cornall is editor of Deeptech Digest and publisher at Ayr Coastal Media. He is an award-winning writer, editor, photographer, broadcaster, designer and author. Contact Jim here.