Spotted: Neurodivergent individuals could be one of the workplace’s largest untapped resources, and helping colleagues who are not neurotypical learn and work in a way that suits them has the potential to unlock many benefits for both businesses and individuals. Now, Danish startup Tiimo has developed a tool that helps towards this goal.
The startup’s app provides a colourful, simple-to-navigate method for helping people manage their regular tasks by supporting their executive functioning skills. Whether it is a morning checklist for getting to work on time or help focusing on a single task for a set period of time, Tiimo helps.
Designed and built by two neurodivergent entrepreneurs and mums based in Denmark, Tiimo makes time visible. In the app, colour-coded timelines and personalised icons make every task, whether daily or sporadic, easily recognisable. Artificial intelligence creates instant, easily accessible checklists for any job, whether it be a child-related routine, self-care, or work project.
Users create task lists and deadlines and then use the range of tools in the app to design their own method for achieving those goals. To help specifically with focus, the company provides monthly body double sessions. People log in to work towards completing a particular task while others also do their assignments and tasks. Additionally, a number of free live events are offered as resources on a variety of topics, including sensory overwhelm, communication, and dating.
Written By: Keely Khoury
Spotted: The UK’s Future Homes Standard is poised to impose stringent new carbon mandates for all new homes, and regulatory initiatives like this are helping to drive the market for rooftop solar power. UK startup GRYD Energy is hoping to take advantage of this trend, while reducing costs and risk for homeowners.
Central to the company’s offer is finance. Institutional investors are already pouring money into solar projects, with the startup highlighting that over a billion dollars per day was invested in solar in 2023. For the most part, however, these investments are in utility-scale projects. GRYD Energy is now trying to tap into this pool of institutional capital for residential rooftop systems.
Its plan is to focus on the new build market, owning and operating rooftop solar-plus-storage systems across entire developments. By co-ordinating closely with developers and fitting in with their construction programmes, the company can deliver economies of scale to provide investors with stable and predictable returns, as with a utility-scale project.
The homeowner meanwhile pays no up-front costs and does not have to purchase the solar hardware. Instead, GRYD Energy sells the customer the electricity produced on their roof at a price lower than traditional power from the grid. This saves them from large one-off costs, but it also means they are not tied into long-term solar financing contracts, making moving house easier. The lease for GRYD’s equipment stays with the title of the house, meaning that if a new buyer agrees to having their energy supplied by the system, there is no need for the existing owner to pay off the cost of the solar panels.
The startup uses AI to model the energy use of a home at the level of individual appliances. Its systems then optimise the time that appliances like EV chargers, water heaters, and clothes driers are used to align with power generation, thereby maximising energy self-sufficiency.
By owning many rooftop solar and storage assets, GRYD Energy can also create a ‘virtual power plant’. This means that homes fitted with the startup’s assets can share electricity with one another independent of the public grid. The entire network can therefore be optimised to ensure the best customer outcomes.
GRYD co-founder Tom Jordan told Springwise that the company is “scaling up to deploy on larger projects,” following a successful pilot and a recent funding round. “Our pipeline of projects is continuing to grow and now exceeds 1000s units over the next few years.”
The company is also engaged with housing associations and registered providers to see how its model can help to retrofit tens of thousands of managed homes to meet more stringent energy efficiency standards.
Written By: Matthew Hempstead
Spotted: As the world becomes increasingly digital and the AI boom accelerates, data centre demand is on the up, which brings its own environmental challenges. Data centres consume between 1 and 3 per cent of the world’s electricity today, with nearly half of this demand coming from cooling. The share of emissions from data centres is further expected to increase to 6 per cent by 2030, during which time emissions must be halved to achieve international decarbonisation targets. The deployment of more efficient cooling solutions is therefore crucial. Enter Apheros, a Swiss deep-tech startup that has pioneered a new approach by inventing an advanced metal foam material.
Founded in 2023 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, Apheros has developed a unique, patented process that outputs metal foams with a surface area 1,000 times larger than commercially available alternatives. These foams also have a completely open porous structure that optimises the flow of a surrounding cooling liquid. Coupled together, these features lead to significantly enhanced heat transfer in liquid cooling systems, which are rapidly gaining traction in the industry as a more efficient solution than traditional air cooling methods.
In addition to the superior thermal performance of Apheros’ metal foam, the manufacturing process is designed with scalability in mind, which should enable widespread adoption in data centres. As CTO and Co-Founder of Apheros, Dr. Gaëlle Andreatta, told Springwise, “we aim to reduce data server energy consumption, improve cooling efficiency, and contribute to a more sustainable future.” She wnet on to explain that there may be even further use cases as the Apheros “process is materials-agnostic. That means it allows us to produce a wide range of materials including alloys… Applications range from cooling to catalysis, energy storage and filtration.”
With a female-led team brimming with commercialisation and tech transfer expertise, Apheros champions diversity of thought and perspective as “essential for driving innovation and creating a more sustainable future.”
Currently, the company is in the early stages of commercialisation, having secured $1.85 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate development and deployment of their technology. The funding round was led by venture capital firm Founderful, and initial activity is focused on the thermal management market. As Apheros scales its production and validates its technology in real-world systems, the startup looks poised to be a key player for energy efficient data centres.
Written By: Oscar Williams
This past Saturday (7th September) was the UN’s International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. The day was designated by the UN General Assembly as a means of encouraging everyone – from individuals to governments, civil society, and corporations – to invest in clean air for all. To mark the occasion, we’ve delved into our library to identify five of the most exciting clean air innovations from the past few months.
What do we mean by air pollution?
Air pollution is a slightly different but closely related issue to climate change. CO2, the most commonly discussed greenhouse gas, is not toxic to humans, except at very high concentrations. Pollutants like particulate matter, ground-level ozone, and nitrogen oxides, on the other hand, have a significant impact on people’s health every single day – and this is typically what is meant by ‘air pollution’. Many air pollutants arise from the same human activities that cause greenhouse gas emissions. For example, transport and power stations are significant sources of nitrogen oxides, just as they are for CO2. Meanwhile, a category of air pollutants called short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) act as a driver of both near-term warming of the planet and human health problems. These SLCPs include the common greenhouse gas methane, as well as black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons.
What is the impact of air pollution?
Experts typically distinguish between indoor and outdoor air pollution. Indoor, or ‘household’, air pollution is particularly associated with dirty cooking practices using open fires or inefficient stoves – although there are also other drivers of poor indoor air quality. In total, the World Health Organization estimates that household air pollution is responsible for 3.2 million deaths per year. Outdoor, or ‘ambient’ air pollution, meanwhile, affects both rural and urban areas and is estimated to have caused 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019.
Over 2.1 billion people, or around 26 per cent of the global population, still lack access to clean cooking today. They rely instead on open fires, charcoal, or low-grade biomass such as crop waste or even dung. As well as being unsustainable, contributing to deforestation and emitting significant carbon pollution, these fuels also lead to significant health impacts and safety issues. Ecosafi is a biofuel energy utility provider addressing this problem through affordable, eco-friendly biomass solutions. The company’s cutting-edge cookers are delivered and maintained as part of a fuel subscription package. They even come with a lifetime warranty. The startup’s ‘EcoMoto’ fuel, meanwhile, is a pellet briquette that uses 100 per cent waste biomass (made of compressed materials like sawdust and agricultural remains) to burn hotter and cleaner than traditional fuels and stoves.Read more
BREATHE EASIER WITH PERSONALISED AIR QUALITY INSIGHTS
Inspired by a shared passion for air quality and improving public health, Louise Thomas and William Hicks founded Air Aware Labs. This UK-based startup helps people take control of their health and protect themselves against polluted air with GPS-linked, real-time air quality modelling. The company has created a Strava integration that provides users with personalised air pollution insights after every outdoor run, hike, or bike ride based on the levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrous oxide pollution. Once they have this data, users can make changes to mitigate exposure to harmful pollutants during their daily exercise. Read more
A BUTTERFLY-INSPIRED BREAKTHROUGH IN INDOOR AIR QUALITY MONITORING
Butterflies are an indicator species due to their rapid and sensitive responses to subtle habitat or climatic changes. This means that their presence or absence in a habitat is a sign of environmental change. Butterfly Air was inspired by the insects to develop an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitoring system. The startup’s IAQ system contains a sensing chamber, dubbed LaminAIR, which controls the sample airflow to ensure the devices consistently update key measurements to meet the latest international WELL V2 standards for building air safety. The sensors measure levels of different particulate matter, including levels of PM1, PM2.5, and PM10. The real innovation, however, is that the device is shaped like a butterfly and the wings and e-ink display on the antenna are engineered to glow when users wave at the device, allowing them to see, at a glance, if the air quality has changed. Read more
CUTTING-EDGE TECH CAPTURES POLLUTION FROM VEHICLE BREAKS
When vehicles slow down, brake pads press against the brake discs, emitting a fine dust of particulate matter. The dust is a major source of air pollution and is highly damaging to lung tissue. Ironically, because electric vehicles are heavier – and so take more braking force to stop – they actually contribute greater amounts of this toxic, braking-related particulate matter than fossil fuel equivalents. Tallano Technologies is one company working to tackle this problem. Its TAMIC system can capture fine particulates emitted by braking systems, including the brakes of cars, heavy goods vehicles, and trains. The technology consists of a suction and filtration system that prevents fine particles from being dispersed into the air by retaining them at source. Read more
ECO TYRES ENHANCE EV RANGE AND MINIMISE MICROPLASTICS
Around 50 million vehicle tyres are sold or supplied each year in the UK. Wear and tear on car tyres has been found to be responsible for around 28 per cent of the microplastics found in the ocean. On top of this, there is increasing scientific concern about “the chemical cocktail” that goes into tyre manufacture, which releases heavy metals like copper, lead, and zinc into the environment. There is clearly a need for more sustainable tyres, and this is where Enso (“circle” in Japanese) comes in. Founded by entrepreneur Gunnlaugur Erlendsson, the startup focuses on developing tyres that not only reduce pollution but also improve durability, performance, and cost-effectiveness – particularly when used on electric vehicles. Erlendsson told Springwise that, in contrast to conventional tyres, Enso’s tyres are “precisely calibrated to enhance durability and reduce particulate pollution by 35 per cent.” Read more
Written By: Matt Hempstead
Spotted: The continuous rise of global temperatures has, among other things, impacted how we dress. This goes beyond just opting for shorts over a pair of trousers, more and more textile innovators are also exploring the application of ‘cooling’ fabrics to help consumers dress comfortably despite the heat. Included in this trend is a research team at the University of Massachusetts.
Effective cooling fabric needs to perform two things: deflect the sun’s heat and allow the body’s natural heat to escape. Taking inspiration from the way homes are built in warmer climates, the university researchers found that calcium carbonate (the main component in limestone and chalk) and bio-compatible barium sulphate will enable both these functions to occur. The scientists then employed a proprietary method to incorporate both compounds into a polymer coating, which can be used to treat fabric like cotton and synthetic fibre.
Initial tests showed promising results. On a day with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius, the scientists found that air under the treated fabric was 4.5 degrees Celsius cooler than surrounding areas, and over 8 degrees Celsius cooler than air measured under ordinary, untreated fabric. Unlike previous attempts to develop cooling fabric using expensive polymers or toxic chemicals, this new method is scalable and environmentally friendly, as it uses cheap and naturally occurring materials.
So far, the team has been limited in its production capabilities because of the size of the lab equipment, but one of the researchers, Professor Trisha L. Andrew, is part of a startup that could enable pilot production of the cooling material on a bigger scale.
Written By: Joshua Solomon
Spotted: Global political, economic, and environmental upheaval can make it difficult to prioritise arts and culture. Yet, in difficult times, it may be even more important than ever to ensure that support and education in the creative industries continues. In the UK, analysts estimate the value of the collective creative industries to be around £126 billion.
The jobs market is consistently competitive in these areas of work, which is why UK-based Curaty helps match artists with collectors and buyers. By championing young and underrepresented artists, the organisation greatly expands the network of contacts for both creators and consumers. Curaty strategically matches artworks with companies, individuals, and public organisations, working closely with London art schools to connect new artists with professional opportunities.
Depending on the space available and what a collector is looking for, Curaty provides a range of services, including art advisory and collection management. As well as loaning art or facilitating sales, Curaty also partners with organisations looking for a more complex artistic piece or space.
Social impact is an important part of the way in which the organisation works, and the Curaty team ensures that women and other underrepresented artists are supported and featured throughout the variety of projects and pieces. The company also provides immersive experiences and produces collection publications for owners wishing to share their pieces with the public.
Written By: Keely Khoury
Spotted: In early 2024, the European Parliament clarified and strengthened the right-to-repair directive that obliges manufacturers to repair goods for consumers. Designed to promote affordable repairs and reduce landfill waste by encouraging longer use, the legislation should help make repairing goods cheaper and easier to do than buying a brand-new item.
For clothing and accessories, Lithuanian company Tingit connects consumers with expert craftspeople who can repair bags, shoes, and clothes. Owners take a short video of the item needing repair and send it to the Tingit team. Tingit then gets a quote from the craftsperson with the best skills for the job and sends the owner a price, all within two working hours.
To go ahead with the repair, the owner accepts the quote and makes a digital payment for the work. Tingit then sends a shipping label, and the owner packages the item and drops it off at the nearest collection point. Repairs are generally completed within seven to ten working days, and if an item is needed more urgently, the Tingit team asks customers to get in touch directly to discuss express services.
Right now, Tingit works with artisans skilled in small leather goods, bags, shoes, and clothing repairs and restoration. Following a €500,000 pre-seed funding round, the company plans to expand its services in early 2025 to include luggage and jewellery repair, with longer-term development plans that include providing upcycling and recycling options.
Written By: Keely Khoury
Spotted: The global food system is estimated to be responsible for around 30 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. But getting food production down to net zero is not just a question of cutting back food miles or reducing fertiliser use – many food companies find it difficult to even track carbon along the agricultural supply chain. This is where Root Global comes in.
The startup begins by collecting and verifying on-farm data from key suppliers. As ingredients move through the supply chain, the platform tracks their climate impact at every stage – from field to shelf. Armed with reliable data, companies can then take effective action to cut emissions. For example, they can use Root’s data to set a baseline for their carbon use, and then reduce this year-on-year.
Root’s on-farm emissions calculator also makes it easy to measure Scope 3 emissions from agricultural operations accurately. Companies can also use the platform to calculate and share their product carbon footprints, ensure regulatory compliance, and even automate the process of filling out buyer reporting templates.
The platform can also be used by food retailers to monitor and report the environmental impact of each of their products. This helps with regulation compliance and allows companies to demonstrate sustainability leadership to customers and stakeholders.
The startup has recently raised an €8 million seed funding round, led by Christoph Janz at Point Nine. Since its launch in 2023, Root has worked with some of Europe’s biggest food and beverage companies, including “the largest dairy plant in Europe and the largest fast-food chain in the world”.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: The real estate sector will face huge challenges as global warming intensifies. At the same time, the industry itself is a massive source of emissions — responsible for 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Gaining a better understanding of the risks and environmental costs of individual developments is vital, therefore, and Swiss startup Optiml aims to make that task easier.
The ETH Zürich spin-out has developed AI-powered software that can analyse real estate assets across the most relevant ESG and regulatory data points. Built on proprietary algorithms developed over five years, the system uses the data to provide a rating that real estate developers and asset managers can use to make financial and sustainability decisions.
Users can create engineering-grade digital twins of any building, run energy simulations, and optimise scenarios based on cost and emissions. The insights can be used to help companies meet regulatory requirements, return on investment targets, and carbon emission goals.
Optiml has already completed more than 30 successful pilot projects with major asset managers and consultancies including AXA, Credit Suisse, and Grosvenor. The company has recently completed a $4 million pre-seed funding extension round led by BitStone Capital.
Written By: Lisa Magloff
Spotted: Spirometry, a simple test that measures how much air you can expel, is an important tool in spotting conditions like cystic fibrosis and asthma. But this kind of test is only readily available to those with easy access to hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, or those who can afford to buy one for home use. Now, Indian company Salcit Technologies is revolutionising this kind of testing with the help of AI.
The startup has created a patented machine learning platform, called Swasaa, that can ‘hear’ illness in the sound of your cough. The innovative bioacoustic technology uses audiometric analysis, taking into account any other symptoms flagged by the user, to accurately measure the health of someone’s lungs and spot potential diseases – just by using a smartphone.
Wearing a mask, users hold the phone horizontally just a few centimetres away from their face and cough for 10 seconds. Detailed insights into lung health are then available quickly and users can use this information to take further action, including consulting with their doctor for treatment. All of this can be done with the easy-to-use Swasaa app.
Being able to conduct these tests at home could transform the way those with ongoing conditions, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), manage their health. Instead of needing to regularly visit their doctor, sufferers can instead test their lung health where they are, and this information is shared with the relevant medical teams. This means that even if it is too difficult or expensive to see a medical professional in person, a user’s health is still being carefully monitored.
Earlier this year, Google researchers developed their own bioacoustic foundation model called HeAR (Health Acoustic Representations), which was trained on 300 million pieces of audio to recognise health patterns in different breaths and coughs. Salcit is now exploring the potential of HeAR to expand the capabilities of its own technology, specifically to enable the early detection of tuberculosis (TB) from coughing sounds.
