OREANDA-NEWS. Six promising startups walked away with cash and prizes worth more than \$650,000 at NVIDIA’s eighth annual Emerging Companies Summit.

More than 50 startups participated in the competition, selected from a field of more than 150 applicants from 30 countries. The event is a regular highlight of NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, in Silicon Valley, which drew more than 4,000 attendees.

This year’s award winners included:

    Ersatz Labs – Makes deep learning accessible through a web-based user interface and API. (U.S. based.)
    QM Scientific – Makes shopping easier by showing the best places to shop based on price, quality or location. (U.S. based.)
    Viontech  – Creates embedded systems for transport, video surveillance, business intelligence (China based.)
    Herta Security – Facial recognition software for surveillance and security (Spain based.)
    Clarifai – Image-recognition software for deep learning (U.S. based.)

Each received \$15,000 in legal services from Cooley, \$60,000 worth of Microsoft’s Windows Azure for BizSpark Plus, an NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU worth \$5,000, and a trophy. But perhaps more valuable is the prestige and visibility that comes from being recognized as one of the world’s more innovative startups.

A sixth startup, Artomatix, won the \$100,000 Early Stage Challenge at the event for the most promising young startup. The Dublin, Ireland-based company automates artwork creation for video games.