A critical look at the finalists of the United Nations AI for Good Innovation Factory 2025 startup competition.
Full post: 4u.lol/writing/artificial-innovation
Excerpt
"Innovation is coming," I sang, "Innovation is striding in his suit of lights over moons and mountains, over parking lots and fountains, toward your silky side. Innovation is coming, he has a coat of many colors and all major credit cards and he is striding to meet you and culminate your foggy dreams in an explosion of blood and soil, at the end of the mechanical age." - Donald Barthelme
The Innovation Factory is a global startup pitch competition run by the UN International Telecommunications Union to recognise AI-powered solutions that help address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Throughout the year, startups apply to pitch at online and in-person events. A panel of judges pick the best pitch to win a free trip to the UN AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva for a chance to compete in the Innovation Factory Grand Finale. Previous Grand Finalists include a blockchain-powered health service, the "world's first AI-native game engine for learning", and low-cost robotic limbs for amputees. (So a mixed bag, you could say.)
Despite running for nearly five years, the Innovation Factory has a low profile: the live pitch streams rarely crack 300 lifetime views and last year's Grand Finale was watched by less than a hundred people online. The real magic happens behind the scenes, of course, when finalists get the chance to rub shoulders with a "Multi-stakeholder, Interdisciplinary, Inter-generational" audience.1 They sit down with ambassadors, take selfies with Gates Foundation program directors, and impress CEOs. They can forever claim the prestigious title of a UN-endorsed Good Innovation, for whatever value that may bring them in future business dealings.2
I first discovered the Innovation Factory in early May after learning that the competition had quietly passed through my city months ago, won by a local startup I'd never heard of. Pulling on that thread led me further into the Factory, and I've spent many sleepless nights trying to understand its strange machinery.
The AI for Good 2025 summit just kicked off this week with the ten3 qualifying startups pitching in the semi-finals on the 8th July, followed by the Grand Finale on the 9th. I've watched all of the qualifying pitches and read up on each company, and I have some thoughts.
Welcome to the Innovation Factory, please enjoy your stay.
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"Conference sponsorship prospectus" is my favourite genre of corporate ephemera, incidentally.
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By some measures, the value of this is approximately $0. But that's a topic for a future essay. ↩
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There were actually twelve qualifying startups. Qure.ai and Rayo also won their qualifying pitch events and were slated to attend, but both were quietly removed from the lineup. ↩