BARCELONA—People tend to focus on the mobile part of Mobile World Congress, but the conference is also one of the largest startup gatherings on the planet.

The halls of the Fira Gran Via become a miniature globe with booths and stands as far as the eye can see. Each pavilion houses dozens of startups from around the world. After walking each and every hall of MWC and somehow emerging alive, we rounded up the most interesting global startups we found.

This year's crop of international entrepreneurs and technologists hail from Belgium to Israel and many places in between. From blockchain and self-driving cars to AI to apps, search, and drones, read on to check out the coolest startups at MWC 2018.


1. Aion (Canada) Aion, a two-year-old Toronto startup, builds custom public and private blockchains through its flexible blockchain network for banks, enterprise clients, governments, and telcos, including Vodafone. More notably, it can also integrate with any other blockchain network, be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Hyperledger. It also completed a successful $35 million initial coin offering (ICO) last year, and plans to launch the capability to run ICOs on its blockchain platform as well.

2. AppCoins (Portugal) AppCoins is an open, distributed protocol and alternative Android marketplace to help developers leverage their business through cryptocurrency payments. The platform redesigns app advertising and in-app purchases with smart contracts based on the Ethereum blockchain. It's designed to create a blockchain-based app ecosystem that increases developer revenue shares and reduces mobile ad fraud through a verification system it calls proof-of-attention. AppCoins offers a single integration and APK for all enabled app stores, and developers receive payments directly in blockchain wallets. The platform is currently in an early adoption phase and is giving away tokens to the first developers to jump onto the platform.

3. Bonadrone (Spain) Bonadrone is an educational drone creation kit for students. The Barcelona-based startup aims to combine technology, science, and sensor tech to let kids not only build drones, but then apply them to their own projects. The drone parts can all be manufactured via 3D printing. Bonadrone launched a program in several local Catalonia schools last year, and hopes to expand throughout Spain. The company is currently working on a software component to go with the DIY drone kit, so that students can learn Python coding in Scratch to program their drones as well.

4. Emporia (Austria) This Austrian device maker built a simplified smartphone along with a separate Emporia app for Google Play designed for seniors and first-time touch-screen users. Built on a custom version of Android 6.0, Emporia sports a purposely spartan UI with easy-to-navigate menus, and—more importantly—a Touch Training app that teaches users how to tap and scroll.

5. JoodLife (Jordan) This Jordanian startup is an app and social platform for donors and volunteers. JoodLife's interactive platform aims to save time and effort in coordinating nonprofit efforts by helping users share materials, organize roles, and build grant proposals.

6. Kumbaya (USA) We hadn't planned on including an American startup, but Kumbaya is on a truly innovative mission. The California company aims to connect the unconnected with zeroXess, its colorful solar-powered home energy and communications platform to bring electricity and connectivity to remote corners of the world. A participant in the U.N. Global Compact for worldwide sustainability, Kumbaya has built zeroXess as an all-in-one hub for homes off the grid. The device features a 10-inch touch screen to control power, connectivity, lights, and communication, and the single-board computer is powered by 120x solar panels. The connectivity options combine 2G and 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and satellite and the device itself, once fully solar charged, can power up to four LED light fixtures and charge six additional devices through USB ports. Finally, Kumbaya has equipped zeroXess with a content library including early childhood instruction, literacy programs, health and nutrition information, as well as agriculture data and entrepreneurship training courses. It's even got built in sensors to detect temperature, humidity, and carbon monoxide/dioxide hazards.

7. Myxyty (France) French startup Myxyty built Qwant, a European search engine with privacy features that block cookies. In the continent's sensitive data and privacy environment and GDPR regulations looming , Qwant is expanding its offerings to not only the base search engine but a kids version as well, along with a smart voice assistant and speaker lineup called MyxyPod, Myxy Voice, and Myxy Lamp that leverage the data-conscious search engine for private voice-activated searches.

8. Sentiance (Belgium) One of the more fascinating yet unsettling startups I found is Sentiance, which pulls back the curtain on what companies can do with all that smartphone data we agree to fork over when accepting user agreements and allowing apps to track location in the background. The Antwerp-based company works with popular apps to pull sensor and device data as well as map location to create contextual profiles and timelines of who a user is, where they go, and what they do. For example, if you get into your car or on a bus in the morning, Sentiance's data analysis can tell you're on your way to work. The startup works in industries such as insurance, fleet management, and on-demand ride hailing, and with retail and commerce apps to make the most of every piece of data you agree to share.

9. Valossa (Finland) Valossa is an artificial intelligence engine for video processing. The Oulu, Finland -based startup uses combined computer vision and audio recognition algorithms to recognize things in video content the way a human does. Designed for use by multimedia companies on both real-time and batch processed video, Valossa can run instantaneous facial recognition complete with sentiment analysis (percentages of happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, etc) and creates a saved, searchable database where you can ask things like who said what at certain timestamped points in a video.

10. Velona (Ireland) This Cork, Ireland-based startup does predictive threat intelligence for cyberattacks, specializing in DDoS events and attacks over telecommunications networks. Velona calls what it does "threat management for voice," meaning call flooding and message flooding over LTE networks and other telco infrastructure, as well as voice-over-IP and SIP networks. The company spent three years developing AI software that "fingerprints" attacks to proactively identify when a network is being attacked or flooded, or if a ransomware or SIP-based malware attack is occurring against 3G, 4G, or VoLTE networks. Velona is currently deployed in Ireland, and is slowly expanding into the UK and mainland Europe.

11. White Raven (Israel) White Raven is a digital browser and AI software for connected and self-driving cars. This innovative Israeli startup is completely redefining how you interact with smart vehicles, with deep learning and computer vision underpinning a visual search engine that superimposes data on real-time car camera footage. White Raven does city-by-city indexing using public mapping data to train its AI model, which can then surface information such as addresses and navigation, commercial and tourism information, and even where a building starts and ends as your car passes it. White Raven is beginning to work on long-term proof-of-concepts with carmakers to integrate its software into infotainment systems within the next few years, but in the meantime the startup is integrating with public transport screens in buses, taxis, and trains to surface real-time data superimposed on video feeds from the vehicles' front and rear-facing cameras. It's even building location-based augmented reality gaming services to keep passengers entertained, and is currently working on an SDK it will release to developers.

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