Startup Talk: First Drone pitch contest produces a whirly winner

Editor’s note: Each Thursday, Talk Business & Politics provides “Startup Talk,” a round-up of startup, technology and entrepreneurial news.

AUSTIN STARTUP WINS FIRST EVER DRONE PITCH CONTEST: Aerial Productions of Austin, Texas, a social venture and drone services startup, recently scored the highest in the first ever drone pitch event at the International Drone Expo (IDE), held in Los Angeles on Dec. 11. The IDE Drone Pitch Competition is an initiative to encourage entrepreneurship, small business growth, and innovation in the unmanned vehicle category. The panel of judges included representatives from some of the top Venture Capital who fund this market segment, including Qualcomm Ventures, Lux Capital, AECOM, and Booz Allen. Awards and prizes equaling $150,000 and a 12-week drone accelerator program were given to the top three winners.

WELLS FARGO AWARDS $250,000 TO CLEAN ENERGY TECH STARTUPS: Financial giant Wells Fargo has selected six new clean technology startup companies to join the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a five-year, $10 million program to help accelerate innovative environmental technologies. The early stage companies will each receive up to $250,000 in cash and in-kind technical consultation to foster solutions focused on reducing energy and creating innovative clean technologies for commercial buildings. Launched in 2014, IN2 is funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

ARKANSAS BLUE CROSS JOINS HEALTHCARE STARTUP HUB FOR INCUBATOR PROGRAM: Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield is joining a consortium that aims to recruit and develop healthcare innovation startup companies in Arkansas. The state’s largest health insurer is joining Baptist Health in partnership with the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub to support HubX—LifeSciences – a business incubator program focused on accelerating the development of new startup companies in the healthcare delivery field. Terms of the private investment were not disclosed. Read more here.

STANFORD ‘SKYSCRAPER’ RESEARCH COULD MAKE COMPUTERS RUN 1,000x FASTER: Stanford engineers and three other universities are working with Mitra and Professor H.-S. Philip Wong to create a revolutionary new high-rise architecture that will make computers run a 1,000 times faster.

The Stanford team describes its new approach as Nano-Engineered Computing Systems Technology, or N3XT, which will break data bottlenecks by integrating processors and memory like floors in a skyscraper and by connecting these components with tiny electronic elevators. The N3XT high-rise approach will move more data, much faster, using far less energy, than would be possible using low-rise circuits. To learn more, click here.