Biped.ai wins Biopôle Startup Fund Support

Moving fast, biped.ai joined the Biopôle ecosystem about a year back, as a startup of two people incubated at the Digital Health Hub. The company has just won Biopôle Startup Fund becoming the 7^th recipient. Biped is now moving into bigger offices with a team of 7 people and has ambitious plans for the future. As Co-founder and CEO Mael Fabien explains to Startupticker.ch “The support from Biopôle Startup Fund has a lot of meaning for us and for our involvement in the HealthTech ecosystem of Lausanne. It will help them support operational costs and ship of device on the market in September 2022.” 

Biopôle is also very pleased with biped.ai achievements and current momentum as its Director of Innovation and Partnerships Pierre-Jean Wipff tells us: « We are proud to have Biped.ai as a Biopôle member, and to witness all the job done so far. We are delighted to support them with the Biopôle Startup Fund to help them meet their next strategic milestones »

Born at an Idiap Hackathon

Biped was created in January 2021, after a hackathon organized by Idiap Research Institute. Mael Fabien was doing a PhD in Machine Learning at the time, and was somehow frustrated to see how autonomous vehicles were around the corner, while blind and visually impaired people he knew from the Jules Gonin hospital still walked with a white cane only. The cofounder then thought that autonomous driving technology could be brought to the pedestrian level, and that’s how biped started.

biped is a smart harness, worn on the shoulders, bringing autonomous driving features to humans. Thanks to its wide angle cameras, blind and visually impaired people can anticipate collisions, understand their scenes and get navigation instructions, through 3D sounds played in headphones. Since its creation, biped's technological solution has generated a lot of interest and gone a long way in a short time. During our recent interview, the CEO explains “The company received pre-seed funding from business angels and 2 venture capital funds. 5 prototypes and 110 testers later, we converged to what will be our first market version.” 

Eyeing on the US Market

Speaking of the future, the startup has ambitious plans. Biped will launch pre-orders at VivaTech, in June, before its official launch in September 2022. FDA approval will also be a key element for its US expansion, hopefully by the end of 2022 says the CEO. Biped.ai has a team of 7 people, with backgrounds in robotics and AI mostly. 

With an annual budget of approximately CHF 500’000 Biopôle Startup Fund supports selected impact-driven life sciences startups with up to CHF 90’000.- per year, no strings attached. Including biped.ai, seven next generation companies have already been awarded the support. Among the first to be selected in 2021, Swiss epigenetic startup GenknowMe has just had its support renewed. Companies interested can apply for Biopôle Start-up Fund until September 13^th 2022. More information can be found here.

(ES)