It’s not too late to submit your connected city solutions! We’re extending the call for innovation deadline.

There’s still time to apply. The deadline for Toyota AI Ventures’ 2020 “call for innovation” focused on smart and connected cities has been extended to June 30th.

When we launched the call for innovation at CES 2020, we were living in a world where COVID-19 hadn’t yet been identified as a pandemic. Since then, everyday life has been dramatically impacted and disrupted, and we want to give entrepreneurs more time to apply for funding opportunities that could help make their products a reality. If you’re running a startup that has found itself needing to pivot due to quickly changing circumstances, you now have more time to possibly qualify for up to $2M in funding.

The focus of the call remains the same: to find and fund real-world solutions that improve the quality of life for urban communities, now and in the future. Of course, the world around us has been transforming rapidly in response to coronavirus, causing everyone to rethink how we live, work, communicate, and care for ourselves and one another. So when you imagine your ideal connected city, years into the future, what are the different technologies, products and services that you see as part of it? How have challenges such as pollution and waste management been solved? How ubiquitous is touchless technology, and how has it been integrated into everyday living?

Our call for innovation welcomes startup solutions that incorporate technologies in AI, data, cloud, autonomy, mobility, or robotics to solve any relevant problem for smart cities. Those problems might be in food supply, construction, water management, transportation, or other areas that may not yet be on the public radar — after all, touchless technology is more important today than it was a year ago.

Learn more and apply through the call for innovation page, and applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis. As this is not a contest or sweepstakes, multiple startups may qualify for funding amounts up to $2M if they each successfully meet all of our criteria and pass our standard due diligence process. At minimum, startups may not have already raised more than $3M in funding, and they must have a working prototype and a viable business model. The factors that will be evaluated include, but are not limited to, the strength of the startup’s team, technology, go-to-market strategy, and overall market opportunity.

We are proud to partner with Toyota Research Institute — Advanced Development (TRI-AD) and Toyota Research Institute (TRI), and selected startups may even receive the opportunity to collaborate with them on future projects.

As new challenges continue to present themselves, we believe that there are entrepreneurs and innovators who will rise to the occasion, and we are excited to offer them another chance to qualify for funding as we look towards developing the smart, connected city of the future.

Are you ready to respond to the call? Apply today through the Toyota AI Ventures website. Applications close June 30, 2020.