Top Three Winners Announced for EQT Foundation’s Impact Pitch Competition in Tokyo

The first impact pitch competition was launched by EQT Foundation, in partnership with Takeoff Tokyo on June 8th. This pitch competition marked the beginning of EQT Foundation’s series of impact pitch events happening in APAC over the coming months. These competitions were devised with the goal to foster the growth and development of impact entrepreneurship within multiple countries, and give impact startups a platform to showcase their ideas. The Impact Pitch Night brought together a diverse and promising group of Japanese startups, united by their unwavering commitment of making a positive difference through innovative business ideas.

The Impact Pitch Night featured five startups pitching to a panel of esteemed judges. These startups went through a rigorous application process and were hand selected for their commitments to make a positive impact in the thematic areas of Climate and Health. Each startup had the chance to pitch their business idea and plan, highlight their value and impact potential, and engage in a Q&A session for further discussion with the judges.

After a rigorous selection process the judging panel identified the following startups as the top three winners:

1st Place: Ex-Fusion, a full stack laser fusion company. Ex-Fusion is dedicated to constructing and energizing a groundbreaking laser-powered commercial nuclear fusion reactor, ushering in a new era of clean and sustainable power generation by 2035. Their vision for producing sustainable energy for a positive climate future stood out among the competition.

2nd Place: Towing, a company adding microorganisms to biochar (porous material) such as plant charcoal. Towing is making it possible to create soil in just about a month, which normally takes three to five years in a field. Their commitment to solve agricultural problems impressed the judges.

3rd Place: Dioseve, a biotech venture focused on developing the technology to turn skin cells into viable egg cells with the aim to help people struggling with infertility. Their cutting edge approach to providing novel solutions for all life caught the attention of the judging panel.

The first place winner of the Impact Pitch Night won an investment of 100K EUR by EQT Foundation, and also gained access to EQT Group’s expert support from its 2000 employees to assist in backing their growth through EQT’s large network and extensive expertise. The startups in second and third place will get introduced to EQT Foundation’s Investment Committee for further evaluation and another chance to secure an investment.

The impact pitch competitions are aimed at discovering and supporting impact startups within the impact ecosystem of that country. These competitions have the goal to give a platform to small impact startups of breakthrough science in the areas of Climate and Health. EQT Foundation provides catalytic capital to help entrepreneurs and researchers bring breakthrough impact ideas from lab to market, combining the expertise of EQT with critical funding gaps. The purpose of EQT Foundation is to push the frontier of impact through incubating the field of impact investing, supporting development of benchmarks for the market to more effectively allocate capital for impact and help the financial market to correctly account for and translate impact into dollar value.