Jump to photos from the event (courtesy of Launch/KPMG)
Tuesday night marked the culmination and celebration of another cohort in the Launch Powered by KPMG accelerator program. This was the fourth batch of startups the program has supported since it got off the ground* early in 2024.
Launch Powered by KPMG is an “AI-enabled, next-generation accelerator model” that provides six weeks of programming for participating founders. Broadly speaking, that programming is designed to help early-stage startups identify target markets and discover customers; refine MVPs based on insight from those customers; establish a targeted go-to-market strategy; and gain a “better understanding of what enterprise engagements actually require.” All of this leads up public presentations like those that took place at Demo Day on Tuesday night.
GrepBeat has been proud to support this accelerator since its inception, both with general coverage and by welcoming a number of program participants and alumni to pitch at Grep-a-Palooza, founder-oriented June conference. Please feel free to have a look at some of that coverage of the first, second, and third cohorts to get a sense of the many exciting startups Launch/KPMG has supported to date.
*swerves to avoid “Launch” pun
Here, meanwhile, is a look at the fourth cohort of startups that just wrapped up the program and pitched to the public at Tuesday’s Demo Night at the Innovate Carolina Junction in Chapel Hill:
Anemo
Anemo takes an innovative approach to providing healthcare intelligence in the assessment of high-stakes patient case trajectory. Their platform is specifically designed to inform patient care by identifying and assessing the journeys of physiologically similar past patients.
With a foundational focus on air quality monitoring, Blue Nova Group provides a variety of tools—namely, DeepCTM, Precision GeoHealth, and Blue Nova Sphere—to help clients across different sectors make more informed decisions with relevant, up-to-date environmental, climate, and/or health data.
Majentics is built to address the transition from traditional SEO to AI-powered search. It helps businesses understand how AI searches make their recommendations, assess competitor performance, address gaps, and ultimately identify changes.
(Read more in our past story)
With a particular focus on making people more aware of potential inflammation, Quellios provides an app that analyzes food intake. The app combines “snaps” (photos of food a user is eating) with “senses” (a user simply presses their fingertip to their smartphone camera) to identify food, assess nutrition, and thereby identify patterns and triggers of inflammation and other issues.
(Editor’s note: Quellios and Majentics were also peers in a 2025 FCAT Fellowship cohort.)
This startup’s tagline—”redesigning landfill-bound materials”—tells the story. The company is taking would-be waste (like glass and styrofoam) and using it to develop “the next generation of concrete,” used in products ranging from consumer furniture to custom architectural installations.
Watchfuly revolves around Plexus, a flagship product that makes use of utilities’ existing data to identify untapped grid capacity, as well as identify and flag risks that might otherwise go unnoticed.
SubmittalIQ is on a mission to make drug application processes for breakthrough medications more efficient. The startup uses AI to accurately predict FDA submission questions and outcomes in advance, enabling those behind new medications to improve strategies and reduce time-to-market.
Fortamis provides regulatory compliance assistance for the mineral value chain, following the mineral “from origin onward” to ensure proper verification at every step of the journey. Among other benefits, this helps prevent the loss of clean energy tax credits
Rizkly is providing operational security and comprehensive governance for physical AI and robotics. Their approach helps ensure that physical, autonomous systems are monitored and maintained in accordance with established policies concerning safety, regulatory requirements, and ethical standards.
The Bioforge provides what they call “AI-powered bioprocess optimization” through a flagship product called BioOptima AI. This platform learns from life science labs’ past experiments and, from that information, recommends what to test next—ultimately bringing about more efficient product development.
Here are some photos of the pitches and event, courtesy of Launch/KPMG:
