Sensorization, Personal Data and AI: Key Takeaways from TechCrunch Disrupt 2022

On October 18–21, 2022, some of the most innovative minds of the world flocked to San Francisco to attend Techcrunch Disrupt 2022 — the biggest annual event of the year for founders, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. In this post, we review some of the highlights of TC Disrupt and share some insights into how Prifina’s user-held data model is empowering the new wave of innovations in the data space.

Top 3 Highlights of TC Disrupt 2022

For over a decade, Techcrunch Disrupt annual conferences have been the melting pot of startup founders and investors. This year was no exception: tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and investors came to San Francisco to showcase their latest innovations or find an opportunity to invest in what is expected to be the next unicorn.

Highlight #1: Meet Serena Williams, the VC Champion

The biggest crowd gathered to listen to world tennis champion Serena Williams and her VC partner Alison Rapaport talk about their approach to investing, how much Serena’s investor persona differs from her tennis persona, and what leadership means in the venture capital industry. You can watch the entire conversation here.

“I want to see everyone win.” … “In tennis, as in real life, sometimes winning looks different, it’s not always about the money.” — Serena Williams

Highlight #2: Sensorization and data-collection everywhere

This year’s Techcrunch event resembled a consumer electronics event: there were dozens of companies who came to present their hardware products and innovations aiming to utilize various sorts of sensors and AI tools that help process the data from those sensors. This trend is obvious in the IoT and robotics space where sensors and data play a crucial role in automating the delivery of products and performing various tasks.

Consider the following examples where sensors and data are at the heart of the innovation:

• Electric robots for agriculture (Swap Robotics) and Real-time tracking solution to analyze the condition of tires (BANF)
• Automating industry transformation (DeepX) and edge computing and AI solutions to facilitate this transition (nota.ai)
• AI-based eye-tracking technology used in AR/VR (Fliption) and deep-fake recognition technology using various static and dynamic data sets (Reality Defender)

Based on what we have observed at Techcrunch, it seems rather obvious that this trend of sensorization is going to continue at an increasing pace. This could be explained by several reasons, but most importantly, it’s because the price of sensors is as low as ever, and various edge computing, machine learning, and open data processing tools continue to become more decentralized and open to the developer community.

Highlight #3: New Solutions of Various Tools and Resources

Every year, the Techcrunch Disrupt team selects 200 startups to compete in the Battlefield competition. The epitome of this competition is for the five winning startups to pitch on the main stage in front of top-tier investors and have the opportunity to present their vision and seek some funding.

TC Disrupt 2022 was remarkable because three out of five finalists were startups working on projects related to extracting minerals from nature or utilizing chemical processes to reuse materials (Advanced Ionics, Intropic Materials, and Minerva Lithium). The fourth one offered developer tools (AppMap) and the fifth one was a robotics company (Swap Robotics).

But a more general theme that could be observed at TC Disrupt 2022 revolves around the idea of democratization: bringing tools and resources to larger groups of stakeholders. For example, Horne Technologies is working on nuclear fusion that has the potential to become the ultimate safe and clean energy source; and ArgenTAG aims to democratize long-read genomic sequencing applications. This trend has been confirmed by Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, whose company offers tools for ideation and designing mockups making it easy for designers and creators to turn their ideas into code.

Most Fascinating Ideas for the Prifina Team

At Prifina, we are building a platform that helps individuals get personalized value from their data and empowers developers and consumer brands to create new types of applications that run on top of user-held data. We see that the real value is not from the number of sensors collected independently from various devices but by aggregating different data sources and unlocking the value for consumers by correlating data and offering insights and nudges to help people improve their lives.

On Prifina’s platform, developers and consumer brands can connect any sensor and build bespoke apps that offer new types of value from data. For example, several consumer-facing IoT companies could benefit from our platform.

Example #1. BBalance offers smart scales that can recognize different family members using the scales and track their weight journey. Their smart scales have embedded sensors that scan the shape of each individual’s feed; then, the weight is attributed according to the differences in footprints of the user.

Example #2: Somato has built a pilates exercise device that collects data from various sensors that are embedded in the sliding panel. Based on that exercise data Somato offers various coaching tutorials.

Prifina’s platform allows any developer to integrate data from the Somato device and build an app that correlates pilates exercise data with other types of data sets (activity and rest) and could potentially offer a more personalized exercise experience.

Example #3: Lura Health is preparing to release medical-grade saliva sensors that can help track your vital health metrics based on the data captured by sensors measuring saliva. Those sensors are attached to a tooth. Lura Health offers an alternative to blood monitoring by analyzing saliva and aims to use this data to prevent health emergencies, manage chronic diseases, and achieve health goals.

With Prifina’s tools and resources, developers can add such new categories of data and build new types of apps that correlate data from various data sources (e.g., food tracking apps and sleep data from wearables).

Example #4: NextSense is developing brain health monitoring technologies: Users wear headphone-like sensors that track electromagnetic brain waves. NextSense analyzes the activity of the user’s brain and explores new ways to develop digital biomarkers that help detect anomalies in brain activity. Based on such data, NextSense contextualizes the information into Neural Digital Twin data sets which can open up new opportunities for pathological (e.g., stroke, seizure, concussion) and performance-related use cases (e.g., addiction cessation, increased focus, or enhanced sleep).

With Prifina’s developer tools, we can anticipate that this type of (super complex) brain health data could be combined with other types of data sets to create even more astounding insights for individual users.

Encouraging Investor Interest

Techcrunch was an amazing opportunity for the Prifina team to meet with the broader investor community and explore different perspectives on the future of personal data and the data market.

Decentralized technologies around personal data and new data infrastructures remain highly topical and at the heart of many investor discussions. There is strong anticipation of how macro trends such as decentralization, sensorization of products, and data privacy culminate and materialize to deliver end-user value in the longer term.

At Techcrunch Disrupt, we expanded the scope of partnerships with global consumer brands who are preparing to build new types of products by adding various sensors and leveraging Prifina’s personal data infrastructure.

Did you miss us at Techcrunch? Feel free to get in touch with us by emailing us at: contact@prifina.com

Connect with us and stay in touch

Prifina is building resources for developers to help create new apps that run on top of user-held data. No back-end is needed. Individual users can connect their data sources to their personal data cloud and get everyday value from their data.

• Follow us on Twitter, Medium, or LinkedIn.
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• Join our Facebook group Liberty. Equality. Data. where we share notes about Prifina’s progress.
• You can also explore our GitHub channel and join us at Slack.