Mays Business School Announces Semifinalists Advancing in National AI Venture Velocity Challenge
531 student teams from 160 institutions narrowed to 27 semifinalist ventures demonstrating evidence-based learning in the AI era.
Mays Business School at Texas A&M University has announced the semifinalist ventures advancing in the inaugural AI Venture Velocity Challenge, a national learning laboratory examining how artificial intelligence is reshaping entrepreneurship for students, educators, and employers.
The 27 semifinalist ventures challenge assumptions about student entrepreneurship, AI adoption, and what meaningful progress looks like for early-stage founders.
The AI Venture Velocity Challenge rewards progress over polish and measures learning velocity, not pitch quality. From May 1 through June 20, teams were asked to move from idea to evidence by testing critical assumptions, learning from customers and markets, using AI to accelerate discovery, and documenting how their ventures changed. Of 531 applicant teams, 248 submitted structured experimentation logs. The semifinalists, extended from 24 to 27 because of a scoring tie, were evaluated by a panel of industry judges using the published rubric and a consensus process that weighted multiple independent scores and written feedback. AI tools supported the analysis of submissions and judge data but did not replace human judgement in determining which teams advanced. Selection criteria included problem significance and opportunity quality, learning velocity and experimentation rigor, AI integration and leverage, evidence of venture progress, responsible impact and ethical design, and adaptive execution and coachability.
The advancing ventures represent 19 institutions, from Texas A&M, Purdue, Cornell, and UC Berkeley to High Point University, Pittsburg State University, and Florida International University. Founders range from freshmen to doctoral students across engineering, business, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and computer science, and several of their ventures already have paying customers or signed letters of intent.
The strongest teams used AI to compress learning cycles, test assumptions faster, and make more disciplined decisions about customers, markets, products, and strategy. The ventures are tackling problems in a variety of industries. AI is being applied to match cancer patients to clinical trials, build wildfire intelligence for emergency responders, prevent livestock mortality on farms, preserve the voices of patients who are losing the ability to speak, and replace broken hiring processes with proof-of-work assessments. The teams that advanced most strongly were not those with the most polished technology, but those that reported negative findings, changed direction based on evidence, and recognized where AI still required human judgement.
“The pace of entrepreneurship has fundamentally changed,” said Levi Belnap, executive director of the Center for Applied Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Mays Business School. “AI has dramatically lowered the barriers to building new ventures. The real differentiator is no longer who can build the fastest, but who can learn the fastest. We built this challenge to measure that.”
The challenge also serves as a national research initiative, with findings shared through an interactive public dashboard at mays.tamu.edu/aivvc. The dashboard maps all 531 applications from 160 institutions and will include aggregate insights from teams’ experimentation logs as the challenge progresses.
Twelve finalists will be selected from the semifinalist pool to compete for $175,000 in non-dilutive funding at the AI Venture Velocity Challenge finals on Sept. 26 at Mays Business School in College Station, where the top prize will be $100,000. The finals are open to the public and community members are invited to attend, with event details and RSVP available on the Mays Business School website.
The semifinalist ventures are:
- AeroGraphiX, University of Connecticut | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Atra, Pittsburg State University | Crossland College of Technology
- BusFactor, Purdue University | College of Engineering; Lehigh University | P. C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science & College of Business and Economics
- ChelysSecurity, Florida International University | College of Engineering & Computing
- Concept Bytes, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | School of Education
- Dhi, Rice University | College of Engineering
- Do Si, The University of Tulsa | College of Engineering & Computer Science; Tulane University | School of Science & Engineering
- EntroPINN, University of California, Berkeley | College of Chemistry; College of Computing, Data Science, and Society
- HumaniCore AI, The Pennsylvania State University | Smeal College of Business
- InfoSavvy, Southern Methodist University | Lyle School of Engineering
- Interlinked, University of California, Berkeley | College of Letters and Science
- IntuSense, Texas A&M University | College of Engineering
- Lobe AI, Texas A&M University | College of Engineering
- MottoNote, University of Wisconsin – Madison | College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence
- NEXUS, Baylor College of Medicine; Columbia University
- Oncera Health, University of Texas at Austin | College of Natural Sciences
- OsageMD, Texas A&M University | Mays Business School
- Parkevo, High Point University | Earl N. Phillips School of Business
- RaizenAI, George Mason University | College of Engineering and Computing
- Rally Dynamics, Texas A&M University | College of Engineering
- RELAI, Cornell University | SC Johnson College of Business; Weill Cornell Medicine | Graduate School of Medical Sciences
- Reliat, Texas A&M University | College of Engineering
- SecRecon, Virginia Tech | Pamplin Business School
- SmartSwine, Texas A&M University | College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
- Vitalia AI, Virginia Tech | Pamplin Business School
- VoiceVault, Texas A&M University | College of Engineering
- Zero1 IO, University of Silicon Valley
About Mays Business School
Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School is building a better future through business. By providing leadership-centered, experiential education to more than 8,000 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing, and supply chain management, Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools nationally for its programs and faculty research. Our mission is developing leaders of character who make a positive difference in the communities where they live, work, and serve.
