Utah Tech Week

Thanks to our partner BW Productions and Brent! Check out the great recap video they put together: https://lnkd.in/g2wjn6pj

Big congrats to one of our partners Pelion on their launch of Fund VIII! See you at their launch party!

It's hard to believe that Utah Tech Week was nearly two weeks ago already — I can *almost* still see the beautiful mountains in the distance! We had an awesome time gathering 40+ local builders, operators, and investors for networking and a panel focused on partnering with and building at Adobe. Alexander Erickson, Bryan Pino, Don Bennion, and Richard Whitehead generously shared their expertise with the community in a conversation moderated by Conor Dwyer, and I know everyone in the audience learned something new. It was a rare opportunity to hear from a group as talented as this one as they reflected on the experience of building a business, having it acquired, successfully integrating, and continuing to grow and build on the inside. Thank you again to our panelists and shout out to Dominic Jordon for the awesome photos — sharing a few of my favorites of the panel below (plus a team pic, duh). 📸 Hope to see you at the next one!

Utah Innovation Fund is an amazing partner for Utah Tech Week. Big things coming from UIF that needs to be on the radar of deep tech founders and student founders.

We shared the stage with giants last night. I foresee great things from the contestants we joined at the Utah Tech Week pitch competition, including Adam Kling at Territories.ai José Rojas at Helios Energy Alexandra Pasi, PhD at Lucidity Sciences (incredible poise under pressure when the slides threw a curveball btw!) Easton Allred at Madder Games Chris Hjelm and Connetic Ventures, huge thank you for sponsoring such a strong prize for this event. You guys will be an amazing addition to a great group of investors at Medicaidsoft. Trent Mano and team, you guys put together something special. I am so grateful for the shot you gave us to show the world what Medicaidsoft can do. And I’m glad the message landed. Great things in store. Stay tuned. #utahtechweek2025 #utahtechweek Mike Haslam Lance Drollinger Signal Peak Ventures Frame VC Mercato Partners Origin Ventures Philo Ventures and @kickstart

Insights gathered at the Utah Tech Week event “Raising Money from Non-Utah VCs as a Utah Founder” hosted by 📱 Zach Barney, co-founder and CEO of Mobly. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/gV3uN3zS 🖋: Beth Taylor

Amazing recap video of our Utah Tech Week announcement with Rocky Mountain Power and Operation Gigawatt thanks to Spencer Cox, Dick Garlish and Joel Ferry! Torus will install 70 Megawatts of Demand Response over the next 12-18 months to help support and expand the resilience of the grid! Amazing week!

Last week was a whirlwind of Utah Tech Week + Seis HQ Week, with so many high impact moments. First, the Utah Tech Week highlights – big gratitude to Trent, Kyle, and everyone who worked so hard to create something very special for Utah. My personal top 3: --Running with tech friends– kicking off Monday with a wonderfully weird 5k around the whale, and closing things out on Friday with hard hitting interval training at TwentyOne Run. --Ben Capell receiving a standing ovation after sharing his story at Reference Group. --The annual Seis Taco Party – thank you to all the friends who came out!

🏆 2025 Utah AI Hackathon Winner – 1st Place out of 186 Team Members! 🏆 I’m thrilled to share that my team won 1st place at the 2025 AI Utah & Utah Tech Week AI Hackathon thanks to Wayne (Hanjun) Park's sacrifice and inspiration, competing against 186 teams! This marks my 7th hackathon championship, and I couldn’t be more grateful to Heavenly Father for this opportunity to make a world a better place. Our project? TED the Bear – an AI-powered therapy robot. 🧸💡 TED the Bear could hug users, recognize speech, analyze emotions, and provide personalized counseling responses in the voices of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or TED the Bear. Additionally, we developed a software avatar that lip-syncs in real-time to match the generated voice and language. 💻 Tech Stack & Implementation: 🔹 Frontend: React + Vite 🔹 Backend: FastAPI (CRUD functions) 🔹 Lip Sync: Gooey.AI 🔹 Face & Emotion Recognition: OpenCV + DeepFace 🔹 Speech-to-Text: Whisper AI 🔹 Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL) 🤖 Robotics Integration with AI: 🔹 Raspberry Pi 4B: Connected via Wi-Fi to Supabase for real-time data exchange 🔹 Microphone & Speaker: Captured user input and played AI-generated counseling responses 🔹 Raspberry Pi Camera: Analyzed user expressions and emotions for personalized responses 🔹 Arduino: Controlled motorized gestures with stepper motors & depth sensors (ultrasonic) to hug users within range for emotional support Over three intense days, our team built this full-stack AI therapy robot. ⭐ Meet the Incredible Team: 👨💻 Eddy Kim – Integrated Whisper AI for speech to text, fine-tuned decibel-based input detection, helped robot internal design building, and produced and edited an amazing 2-minute demo video. 👨💻 Jonghyuk Lee – Designed the entire backend, implemented Text-to-Speech & Speech-to-Text, built facial/emotional recognition, and integrated RAG-based AI responses from OpenAI. He also set up Supabase connections and React frontend. 👨💻 Taehoon Kim – Engineered prompt optimization to determine when to use RAG vs. direct responses, solved Audio-to-Text issues, integrated AI lip sync with moviepy and wav2Lip, frontend character toggle and picture it at the center, managed the data queueing system, and integrated with each API endpoint. 👩💻 Yirang Lim – Built the infrastructure of backend system, trained AI voices to match characters like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and TED the Bear, implemented text to speech, save those responses to DB, setup Supabase and design tables, and voice cloning using Play.ht, and built a RAG system. 🎯 My Role in the Project: I built the full-stack development of the AI therapy robot, integrating: ✅ Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Stepper Motors, Ultrasonic Sensors ✅ Custom hugging logic & body language ✅ Real-time speech recognition & AI response system ✅ Built CRUD functions with Supabase Our team members are actively seeking internships & full-time opportunities, and I highly recommend them to any top-tier AI teams!🚀🔥

My Fourth Utah Tech Week. This was probably one of the most impactful events I attended during Utah Tech Week—not necessarily because of the content, but because of what it revealed about the current challenges facing the immigrant community in the U.S. I had the privilege of participating in "Tech Week Juntos" this past Wednesday, and here are a few powerful takeaways: - Opportunities don’t come simply because we’re Latino—they come because we show initiative and strive for excellence. - Being part of a community matters. Lifting others up and building together makes all the difference. - Our parents taught us the value of hard work, but that’s not enough—you also have to advocate for yourself and make your work known. - We’ve always been strong and resilient—and we continue to be today. The most heartbreaking moment came at the end of the event. The organizers had provided empanadas, among other food, and someone mentioned that the person who delivered the empanadas didn’t stay because they were afraid. Afraid of simply being there. That broke my heart and reminded me that fear is real for so many in our immigrant community. It’s a stark reminder of the challenges people face every day, even when they’re just working hard and contributing to their communities. If you can, take a moment today to reflect on this and join the campaign of not buying anything today, as proposed by the Latino community in America, to show their impact on the economy. Thanks to all the organizers of this incredible event. Latinas In Tech Utah ALPFA Salt Lake City Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Angeles Investors Club Ability Silicon Slopes Latino s