Toronto-based Xatoms and Calgary-based Knead Technologies have taken home top prizes in their respective categories at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) pitch competition in Austin, Texas.
Knead, which sells customizable software that matches non-profit food redistribution organizations like food banks with local food donors, took home the top prize in the AgTech & Food category. Xatoms, which looks to use artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum chemistry to make water safe to drink, won out in the Innovative World Tech category, which recognizes any creative and innovative application, product, or service that does not fit in another SXSW Pitch category.
“Incredibly grateful to showcase our technology in Texas—made and built in Canada.”
Diana Virgovicova
Xatoms
Both pitch winners posed with oversized cheques and took home $4,000 and even larger bragging rights, as they beat out the more than 70 other finalists and alternates amongst all nine pitch categories. The only other Canadian companies in the running were nervous-system imaging technology startup NerView Surgical, smart sleep mask startup Bia Sleep, and security video analysis company Sigen AI, leaving Canada with an impressive winner-to-participant ratio.
“As the solo company from Alberta and one of just five Canadian companies in the competition, we’re incredibly proud to represent our home on one of the biggest stages in tech,” Knead founder and CEO Lourdes Juan said in a LinkedIn post.
Knead, which closed an $800,000 pre-seed round earlier this year, helped redistribute 100,000 pounds of food from vendors at the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit last spring. The company claims it has facilitated the redistribution of over 2 million pounds of surplus food—which it says is about equivalent to 1.67 million meals and 236 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in emissions savings.
RELATED: How Calgary-based startup Knead tackled the NFL draft’s food waste with software
Meanwhile, Xatoms is no stranger to recognition. The emergent startup won three prizes at last year’s Startupfest, including the Best of the Fest prize, the Women in Tech investment prize, and the Front Row Ventures student entrepreneur prize. Born in Slovakia, Xatoms co-founder and CEO Diana Virgovicova recounted on The BetaKit Podcast how she has been all over the world receiving encouragement for her company’s water cleaning tech, including from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 776 fellowship and meeting Water.org co-founder, actor Matt Damon.
“Incredibly grateful to showcase our technology in Texas—made and built in Canada—we had a chance to compete with top innovative companies from the US, Israel, and Australia, and we are bringing home the winning place,” Virgovicova said in a LinkedIn post. “Competing in this category was incredibly challenging; we demonstrated the scalability of our technology as well as its incredible impact.”
Feature image courtesy Diana Virgovicova via LinkedIn.