Intel® Liftoff Days returned from May 12–16 for our second big dev sprint of the year, bringing together another incredible group of early-stage AI startups. This is the highlight of each quarter in the program: five days to build, refine, test, and demo, all with full access to Intel® Tiber™ AI Cloud, 1:1 mentoring, and a community of founders solving tough problems with serious focus.
The live demos at the end of the week showed just how far focused teams can go with the right support.
Our Goals for the Event
Intel® Liftoff Days is designed to accelerate AI innovation by providing startups with a concentrated week of hands-on development, expert guidance, and access to Intel technology. It’s a product sprint, a testing ground, and a feedback loop.
This year, the focus centered on advancing capabilities in building AI agents and multimodal AI, enabling smarter workflows, better automation, and clearer interactions across their platforms.
Beyond development, the event featured workshops and sessions to help them overcome challenges like scalability, processing, and complex AI model deployment. Ultimately, the goal was to fast-track their product development cycles and prepare them for successful demo presentations, highlighting tangible progress made in just five days.
The Challenges
Every team showed up with a clear goal. Some wanted to improve live data flows. Others focused on sales tools, renewable energy, or safety systems. With access to Intel’s infrastructure and the Intel® Tiber™ AI Cloud, teams had the chance to push their projects further than usual.
Judging criteria emphasized:
- Technical innovation: Novelty and complexity of AI solutions.
- Scalability and performance: Ability to handle real-time data and scale with demand.
- Impact potential: Use cases addressing significant industry pain points.
- Demo readiness: Quality and clarity of the final demo presentation.
Highlights: Participating startups
Patrol | AI-driven customer support automation enhanced for complex queries. |
AI digital teammates for renewable energy with refined automation and data analysis. | AI sales assistants for small businesses with enhanced automation features. |
Business process automation tools with refined workflow features. | Business automation scaled for handling complex small business tasks. |
AI solutions focusing on predictive capabilities and scalability for businesses. | Customer engagement automation with improved interaction algorithms. |
AI innovations in quantum photonics scaled with Intel tech integration. | AI-driven crowd prediction models enhanced for urban safety environments. |
Projects We Loved
Bezoku AI – Smarter Customer Interactions
Bezoku AI wowed the community with its customer engagement automation demo, highlighting how they fine-tuned LSTM models using Intel’s stack. Their feedback loop optimization and real-time responsiveness impressed both mentors and peers.
Reama AI – Powering Renewable Energy Ops with AI
Reama AI is building AI teammates that help manage renewable energy systems. This week, they showed better automation and sharper predictive analytics, making their platform even more useful in the field.
PeopleSense - AI for crowd prediction and safety
PeopleSense impressed with its AI-powered crowd prediction technology aimed at improving urban safety. During Intel® Liftoff Days, they refined their modeling to better anticipate crowd movement patterns, opening new use cases for city planning and public event management. The project drew attention for its relevance in today’s smart city initiatives and its use of Intel tools for more accurate inference and model optimization.
Raidu - Predictive AI for operations
Raidu showcased their AI system designed to forecast and optimize business processes across industries. Their demo focused on enhancing scalability and predictive accuracy using Intel’s compute resources, making it easier for businesses to identify bottlenecks and make data-driven decisions faster. The judges noted the clarity of their use case and how efficiently they integrated AI with operational intelligence.
ToumAI - Workflow automation with AI agents
ToumAI builds task-specific agents that automate multi-step business processes like scheduling and approvals. During Liftoff Days, they used Intel® Tiber™ AI Cloud to speed up inference and improve real-time performance.
Kneogin – Scaling Business Automation for SMBs
Kneogin stood out with their focus on real life workflows for small businesses. Their refined automation tools, optimized for Intel tech, show how AI can simplify operations at scale.
Sonetz - Sales AI for small businesses
Sonetz showcased how its AI assistants help small businesses manage sales inquiries and qualify leads automatically. The team improved response speed and accuracy by optimizing backend performance on Intel’s compute infrastructure - making smart sales support faster and more efficient.
Lessons We Learned
Intel® Liftoff Days offered more than just a development sprint - it revealed how early-stage AI startups are rapidly maturing in both ambition and technical depth. Startups like Bezoku and Reama AI learned the importance of scalable architecture over sheer model size, while others used the week to fine-tune tools, rethink assumptions, or try something new with guidance from mentors. The pace was fast, but the learning stuck.
The biggest takeaway? A supportive, fast-moving community accelerates not just products, but learning too.
Breakthroughs on Intel
Several startups made real progress by leveraging Intel technology during Intel® Liftoff Days. Bezoku refined their customer engagement models using Intel’s LSTM support, while Quantum Photonics and others scaled AI workloads with Intel® Tiber™ AI Cloud and Intel accelerators. Hands-on mentoring helped teams optimize performance and system design. Explore the full list of Intel resources at the end of this blog.
What Our Community Had to Say
"Huge thanks to everyone at Liftoff, and particularly to our mentor, Jyothis James who helped us debug and hit our marks for demo day. We’re dedicated to the Intel stack. While we weren’t able to explore xLSTM, the LSTM support on Intel works for us at this stage of our evolution." — Ian Gilmour, Co-founder at Bezoku.ai
"It was a great experience as always." — Kaushik Neogi, Founder at Kneogin.
Our Next Adventure: Intel Liftoff Days
Mark your calendars! The next Intel® Liftoff Days event is set for Q3 2025 and will continue the momentum with a focus on Edge AI and privacy-first development. Startups can expect fresh tools, tighter feedback loops, and another sprint toward a working demo. Stay tuned for registration details and session highlights.
About Intel® Liftoff
Intel® Liftoff for startups is open to early-stage AI and machine learning startups. This free virtual program helps you innovate and scale, no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey.
Resources used during Intel® Liftoff Days
- 6th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor - Latest generation of enterprise server processors
- Intel® Tiber™ AI Cloud - Cloud platform for AI development and deployment
- Intel® Gaudi® 2 AI accelerator - High-performance AI training processor designed for deep learning workloads
- Related articles: https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Artificial-Intelligence-AI/Intel-Liftoff-Days-Q1-2025-Building-Better-AI-Together/post/1681111
I'm a proud team member of the Intel® Liftoff for Startups, an innovative, free virtual program dedicated to accelerating the growth of early-stage AI startups.