Infinite Foundry, a startup created by the Técnico alumnus André Godinho Luz, was one of the winners of the University Startup World Cup, in the “Smart City Growth Stage” category. The University Startup World Cup brings together the best university startups from around the world to network, exhibit and pitch for a chance of becoming the world’s best university startup in different categories.
“When we develop technology we have to face many obstacles before we can become a reference in the market. This victory at the University Startup World Cup shows us that we are on the right path, which is to continue to work hard in order to achieve our goals”, says André Godinho Luz.
This was Infinite Foundry’s first participation in the University Startup World Cup and the fact that “there were competitors from all over the world” meant that there were only “reduced hopes of winning”, shares André Godinho Luz. “Not because we don’t have confidence in our work and in our technology, but because there are several companies that are also doing a good job”, stresses the Técnico alumnus.
Created three years ago, the Infinite Foundry is a 3D industrial digital twin platform for production management to predict problems, improve efficiency, and virtually train workers to improve ergonomics. “Our company provides reduced problem-solving time and process optimisation, as we can virtually test new operating scenarios and provide immersive virtual reality training to human operators in a highly realistic scenario”, explains the startup co-founder. “This technology had its origin at IST Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEM)“, he adds.
According to André Godinho Luz, market validation and scalability were decisive factors for this victory. “We have more than 30 large industrial customers, such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Renault, General Motors, the European Space Agency, which allows us to scale internally very quickly within these customers, and also in their supply chain”, stresses the alumnus.
Last September, Infinite Foundry was also one of the three winners of the 5th edition of IoT Challenge, a technological competition promoted by Altice Empresas that challenges Portuguese companies and startups to present IoT Market Ready Solutions.
The team have their sights set on the future and André Godinho Luz says “we are going to strongly invest in internationalisation in Central Europe and North America, which are two of the three major world markets alongside Asia, which will be our focus in the medium term”.
