ExoLabs wins EU funding and support

ExoLabs, a spin-off from the University of Zurich (UZH), is among the winners of the Parsec Accelerator. The EU’s accelerator program supports new products or projects that show great potential in the food, energy or environment sectors. The 15 winners, which were selected by an expert jury, receive 100,000 euros each of equity-free funding, as well as coaching, business contacts and support in developing their products and services for the global market.   

ExoLabs applied for the accelerator program together with Think Outside from Norway and Ubimet from Austria with a joint project called Snow Information for Hydropower. The Zurich-based start-up uses remote sensing as a tool to understand and monitor the influence of human activities on the environment, according to a press release. State-of-the-art data analysis techniques make it possible to simulate, evaluate and predict environmental changes.

The project selected by the EU focuses on hydropower. ExoLabs provides hydropower operators with predictions for snowmelt and water inflow to help them generate energy in the most profitable manner. By using scalable cloud processing and machine learning, ExoLabs has the potential to serve hydropower stations around the world.

ExoLabs recently won the Swiss national finals of Climate Launchpad, the world’s largest green business ideas competition whose mission is to unlock the world’s cleantech potential in the fight against climate change. In addition, Innosuisse is supporting a project that ExoLabs is involved in together with the EcoVision Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and other partners, including Outdooractive, MountaiNow and the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) in Davos. The project seeks to measure snow cover in the mountains in real time.