A company that uses AI to help mining operations save money and decrease greenhouse-gas emissions, won the Edmonton portion of Startup TNT's Investment Summit VII.
NTWIST charges companies $200,000 to generate $2 million in savings, co-founder and CEO Chowdary Meenavilli said in his pitch on June 15. In the future, NTWIST plans to charge a fee per tonne of CO2 emissions avoided through the optimization the company offers.
Suncor, Vale, and Sherritt are among NTWIST's repeat customers.
"We pretty much have all the big customers in Canada, we are going after the international market right now," Meenavilli said.
There are competitors in this space, but NTWIST has the ability to make a difference quickly, he said. "It's a plug-and-play that we go in, install, and it starts producing the results, rather than waiting months or years to make things happen."
Kerry Russell, who has been with Startup TNT since its first summit in 2020, said his fellow investors heard good things about the company.
"We talked to one of your customers who told us they invested $200,000 with you and now are saving $200,000 a month in their electrical bills — that's impressive," he told Meenavilli after his pitch.
Two companies received side deals at the event: SPI Utilities Solutions, which has developed a dry-ice tool for cleaning high-voltage equipment without turning off the power, and Areto Labs, which develops spam- and harassment-blocking software for social media channels.
Summit finales took place in three other Prairie cities at the same time. Omnee won in Saskatoon, Standard Carbon won in Winnipeg, and OraQ won in Calgary. Each winner is expected to get at least $150,000 in investment.