AVA Propulsion Archives - StartupsSanAntonio.com

18Feb

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

San Antonio Startups to Watch in 2021

Despite the widespread impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, the broader San Antonio tech ecosystem made some gains in 2020.From the skyrocketing sales of Xenex’s germ-zapping robots and 6Connex's virtual event platform to the aspirational building of Port San Antonio’s Innovation Center to be completed by 2022, we experienced some growth during unprecedented times. During the third quarter of 2020, San Antonio experienced the highest growth rate in tech jobs in the country at 21 percent.We still have work to do, but take this as a vote for guarded optimism for a subset of all innovative activity in San Antonio — startups.Despite its lack of relative density, San Antonio's startup ecosystem shows signs of innovation across many different fields. You'll find on the 2021 list mor...

AVA Propulsion Builds Large-Scale Drones for Delivery

8Feb

By Iris Gonzalez1 Comment

Articles, Featured

AVA Propulsion Builds Large-Scale Drones for Delivery

The future of product and people delivery via large drones is not as far off as you might think, especially if you ask AVA Propulsion, a San Antonio-based drone-building startup.David Gonzales, chief executive officer (CEO) and Kyle Johnson, president, are developing and building hardware and software for large-scale vertical take-off and landing autonomous drones that can move cargo or transport a person to hard-to-reach places.AVA Propulsion, Inc. (which does business as Aerial Vehicle Automation) has two models depending on customer needs. Their X8 is an electric multi-rotor platform that can deliver payloads up to 400 pounds over shorter distances. Their Winged X8 is a gasoline-electric hybrid platform for flying 200 miles with five flight hours. The Winged X8 takes off vertica...

Food Startup Grain 4 Grain Wins $50,000 at Tech Fuel Pitch Competition

28Oct

By Iris GonzalezNo Comments

Articles, Featured

Food Startup Grain 4 Grain Wins $50,000 at Tech Fuel Pitch Competition

As craft beer brewing grows in popularity, so does the staggering amount of leftover spent barley grains — over 6 billion pounds annually. That opportunity for food innovation is what drove Yoni Medhin and Matt Metchly to launch their low-carb spent barley flour company.Grain4Grain won the top prize of $50,000 Wednesday evening at Tech Fuel, San Antonio's largest, an equity-free cash-prize pitch competition for early-stage tech startups. Launched by Tech Bloc, a San Antonio technology industry advocacy nonprofit, the three-tiered $100,000 competition is funded by Bexar County’s Innovation Fund to help emerging tech entrepreneurs launch innovative companies. Five judges with venture funding expertise questioned, then selected the $50,000 grand prize and $20,000 second-place winners...