Minerva CQ, a startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is making customer service calls quicker and more efficient for both agents and customers, with a focus on those in the energy sector. The NVIDIA Inception member's name is a mashup of the Roman goddess of wisdom and knowledge -- and collaborative intelligence (CQ), or the combination of human and artificial intelligence. The Minerva CQ platform coaches contact-center agents to drive customer conversations -- whether in voice or web-based chat -- toward the most effective resolutions by offering real-time dialogue suggestions, sentiment analysis and optimal journey flows based on the customer's intent. It also surfaces relevant context, articles, forms and more. Powered by the NVIDIA Riva software development kit, Minerva CQ has best-in-class automatic speech recognition (ASR) capabilities in English, Spanish and Italian.

Iterate.ai announced it has joined NVIDIA Inception, a program designed to nurture startups revolutionizing industries with technology advancements. Iterate.ai is focused on developing AI and IoT applications through its rapid development low-code platform called Interplay. By including major AI engines, IoT connectivity platforms, and legacy system APIs all as containerized nodes in a common platform, Iterate can rapidly develop complex AI applications with low-code drag-and-drop connections between those nodes. Other work includes license plate readers, weapons- and threat-detection systems, vehicle-damage estimation, and complex international document tracing by leveraging ML for data modeling. NVIDIA Inception will allow Iterate to drive deeper into the enterprise with low-code applications that leverage the program's wealth of datasets, software development kits, enterprise customers, and further development on GPU-based complex AI training.

Newsight Imaging Ltd., an innovative semiconductor company that develops 3D machine vision sensors and spectral vision chips, announced it has joined NVIDIA Inception, a program designed to nurture startups revolutionizing industries with technology advancements. Membership in Inception will enable Newsight to expand its approach to the automotive depth-vision ecosystem, which includes makers of lidars, advanced driver-assistance systems, autonomous vehicle-safety technology and more, as well as to support customers wishing to build products based on Newsight's sensors and the NVIDIA AI platform. Inception will also provide Newsight the opportunity to collaborate with industry-leading experts and other AI-driven organizations. Recommended AI News: Cybersecurity for AI Solutions Provider TrojAI Inc. Closes $3 Million Seed Round "We're privileged to join NVIDIA Inception, which provides access to the best technical tools, latest resources and opportunities to support our innovative core image-sensing technology," said Eli Assoolin, Newsight Imaging CEO. "The collaboration with NVIDIA will provide Newsight with additional resources to scale faster, and further advance the next generation of sensors and solutions for 3D machine vision and spectral analysis."

Electric utilities are taking a course in machine learning to create smarter grids for tough challenges ahead. The winter 2021 megastorm in Texas left millions without power. Grid failures the past two summers sparked devastating wildfires amid California's record drought. "Extreme weather events of 2021 highlighted the risks climate change is introducing, and the importance of investing in more resilient electricity grids," said a May 2021 report from the International Energy Agency, a group with members from more than 30 countries. It called for a net-zero carbon grid by 2050, fueled by hundreds more gigawatts in renewable sources.

Different parts of the globe are experiencing distinct climate challenges -- severe drought, dangerous flooding, reduced biodiversity or dense air pollution. The challenges are so great that no country can solve them on their own. But innovative startups worldwide are lighting the way, demonstrating how these daunting challenges can be better understood and addressed with AI. Here's how five -- all among the 10,000 members of NVIDIA Inception, a program designed to nurture cutting-edge startups -- are looking out for the environment using NVIDIA-accelerated applications: India-based Blue Sky Analytics is building a geospatial intelligence platform that harnesses satellite data for environmental monitoring and climate risk assessment. The company provides developers with climate datasets to analyze air quality and estimate greenhouse gas emissions from fires -- with additional datasets in the works to forecast future biomass fires and monitor water capacity in lakes, rivers and glacial melts.

Fisheries collect millions upon millions of fish eggs, protecting them from predators to increase fish yield and support the propagation of endangered species -- but an issue with gathering so many eggs at once is that those infected with parasites can put healthy ones at risk. Jensorter, an Oregon-based startup, has created AI-powered fish egg sorters that can rapidly identify healthy versus unhealthy eggs. The machines, built on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano module, can also detect egg characteristics such as size and fertility status. The devices then automatically sort the eggs based on these characteristics, allowing Jensorter's customers in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and Russia to quickly separate viable eggs from unhealthy ones -- and protect them accordingly. Jensorter is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures cutting-edge startups revolutionizing industries with advancements in AI, data science, high performance computing and more.

More than 200 artificial intelligence startups applied for Nvidia's Inception contest, which seeks to identify the best AI startups. The company created the program to find new uses for its graphics processing units (GPUs), but it's also hoping these startups will change the world. So far, the company has identified more than 2,800 AI startups over the years through Inception. I listened to pitches from 12 finalists in a Shark Tank styled judging event last week. Each is competing to be one of three finalists to share the $1 million prize pool.