4YFN 2022 – Treasure hunt.

Diamonds in the rough?

• Part of the MWC trade show is the 4YFN (four years from now) section where all the start-ups are to be found, most of whom have nothing to do with mobile technology.
• For once, I had time to do an in-depth tour of this exhibition and found 4 companies that piqued my interest.

Inmersia – Outlandish or hidden genius?

• Top of the list of outlandish claims was Inmersia, a university spin-out that is creating a pair of AR glasses.
• Inmersia claims to have fixed the field of view problem for augmented reality and having focused on this area at MWC 2022, I can confirm just how bad it still is.
• The leading offerings offer a field of view of around 50° which results in a very poor user experience.
• Inmersia claims to be able to offer a 150° field of view in a small, compact form factor.
• The catch is that this product does not yet exist outside of the lab, but the company did say that it has worked out how it was going to miniaturize what it does have into a usable form factor.
• This is intriguing as, in my opinion, this could be a giant leap forward but, as ever, the proof is in the pudding.
• Needless to say, I will be looking into this one in more detail to find out whether these are outlandish claims or the beginning of a proper unicorn.

IDUN Technologies – Musk-less brainwaves

• Hidden away in the health care section was Zurich-based IDUN Technologies which is at its heart is a materials science company.
• The company has developed a material that can be used for earbuds that is capable of picking up electrostatic signals from the brain when placed in the ear.
• This is not some Elon Musk promoted brain implant wheeze but a real product that has a couple of good use cases.
• The first is sleep-scoring where the company is working with Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda to replace the standard sleep scoring test called polysomnography (PSG).
• PSG involves lots of head attached electrodes and expensive machines but is the gold standard of sleep medicine.
• So far IDUN Technologies can achieve 70% accuracy with its earbuds which compares favourably to other trackers like Oura or Apple Watch which are 40% accurate or less.
• The company also believes that it can revolutionise the hearing aid industry by being able to selectively amplify the noises the listener is focused on.
• This is done by interpreting the brain signals to work out which frequencies to amplify rather than just making everything louder.
• The product is still at an early stage, but the results so far are, in my opinion, far more promising and relevant than monkeys playing MindPong.

Kamleon – A pot to pee in

• Kamleon is a health monitoring company whose first product is a smart urinal that can analyse the urine that passes through it.
• Currently, this provides an assessment of how hydrated the person is but there is scope for far more.
• Many people, even athletes, often neglect their hydration levels as in the early stages there are no symptoms to signal that a course correction is needed.
• This is a problem that Kamleon is working on correcting but there is a lot further that this product can go as many diagnostic tests use urine.
• The obvious candidate is diabetes, but also prostate health and diagnosis is also a possibility.
• The product is currently being trialled at the public lavatory in Barcelona’s Sants Estacio train station and interest is high.
• There are plenty of issues that need to be worked out around privacy, data privacy and medical licencing but this is an innovative approach to solving a big problem.

Oxford Quantum Circuits – All about scale

• FYFN also showcased a lot of quantum computing companies, the most interesting of which was Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC).
• OQC builds quantum computers using superconductivity but has two differentiators that make it interesting.
• First, its circuits are 3D in that the input and the output lines are above and below the chip itself rather than on one side.
• This gives the ability to easily scale the size of the computer without having the problem of where to put the input and output lines.
• This is a unique proposition that I have not seen elsewhere.
• Second, the company has just made one of its computers (Lucy) available as an instance on Amazon.
• OXC has done all the software plumbing to allow access via Amazon meaning that anyone who wants to do some quantum computing can get access to it without having to install one of these beasts in the cupboard.
• Most of the competitors build and deliver quantum computers to anyone who wants one which are typically academic or government research institutions.
• Quantum computing is many years away from replacing silicon, but the seeds are being planted and the first opportunities to invest in the giants of tomorrow are emerging now.