• The Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge was founded in order to give deeptech entrepreneurs, engineers, and researchers access to the funding, visibility and connections they needed to have impact. 

• Since 2013, the Global Challenge has attracted over 13,000 applications from over 100 countries, with 4,000 applicants in 2017 alone. 

• Teams compete across 12 different tracks: New Space, Aeronautics, New Mobility, Environment, Global Health, Digital Health, Industrial Biotech, Data & AI, Wellbeing, New Materials, Food, Agriculture & Environment and Industry 4.0.

Hello Tomorrow, the global organization working to turn breakthrough technologies into real world solutions, announces the opening of applications for the fifth edition of its Global Challenge. The Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge is a renowned startup competition designed to unearth the world’s best and brightest deeptech projects and early-stage startups, providing participants with equity-free funding, global visibility and key connections with players in the deeptech innovation network. Interested teams can learn more and apply to the Challenge at https://hello-tomorrow.org/startups.

Hello Tomorrow was founded in 2013 by Arnaud De la Tour and Xavier Duportet, founder of Eligo Bioscience, to help bridge the gap between research and commercial applications of deep tech. While working on their PhDs, the two saw too much potential for world-changing technologies going to waste in labs without applications, so they created Hello Tomorrow to bring together people across business, science, engineering, investing and beyond to combine the skills required to transform these deep technologies into impactful products on the market.

“Thanks to their ability to take risks and move fast, startups are catalysts of deeptech innovation, but they lack the capacity, industrial expertise and financial resources to bring new concepts to market by themselves – it takes a village to successfully raise their ideas from prototypes to products,” explained Arnaud De la Tour, co-founder and Managing Director of Hello Tomorrow. “The Global Challenge is far more than the prizes we award; our network is the global village that enables deeptech startups to achieve impact.”

For this year’s Challenge, Hello Tomorrow will select 500 projects with the potential for strong, long-term impact from thousands of startup candidates across the 12 Challenge Tracks. The best early-stage startup will win a €100,000 grand prize courtesy of Hello Tomorrow’s Worldwide Partner, BNP Paribas, with additional prizes of €15,000 being awarded to the winners of each of the competition’s tracks. Top startups can also win exclusive access to the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit, and meetings with hundreds of top seed and early-stage VCs at Hello Tomorrow’s Investor Day. Select regions will have Local Finals prior to the Summit, organized by Hello Tomorrow’s hubs in in Japan, Singapore, Ghana, Turkey and Brazil; winners of Local Finals will receive prize money, sponsored flight tickets to Paris for the Global Summit and more.

“Over the course of history, there have been key technological advances – from the steam engine and the light bulb to the internet and genetic engineering – that had a profound impact on the way we eat, build, work, treat diseases and interact. But these revolutionary technologies only made it into people’s lives because, at one point, ambitious scientific-entrepreneurs found the right partners to transform their invention into real products,” said Xavier Duportet, co-founder and President of Hello Tomorrow. “Through the Challenge, we not only give an opportunity to the next Louis Pasteur, Bill Gates or Elon Musk to be put in the spotlight, but most importantly we catalyze efficient interactions between these bright scientific entrepreneurs and all the necessary key stakeholders – inspiring and experienced mentors, industry leaders, investors, policy makers and governments – to give them the best possible chance of changing the world.”

Past Grand Prize winners include GTX Medical (‘14), Biocarbon Engineering (‘15), Lilium Aviation (‘16), and Saathi (‘17), who have, respectively, found their CEOs at the Summit, formed strategic partnerships with corporations, raised one hundred million euros in VC funding, and been named to lists such as Forbes 30 under 30 and MIT’s Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

“Without a doubt, Hello Tomorrow is the epicenter of deeptech innovation. Their network has been built from the ground up, and is the only place to go to for help if you are a deeptech startup looking to go global,” said Patrick Nathen, co-founder of Lilium. “Before we raised our Series A and B, Hello Tomorrow was the  first place people recognized our project as more than just an idea. The connections you make at Hello Tomorrow are really awesome.” 

Hello Tomorrow runs the Global Challenge thanks to the strong support of its partners, which include Worldwide Partner BNP Paribas, Global Partner BCG, and Main Partners L’Oréal, Unitaid, Air Liquide, Alliance Ventures, Groupe ADP, Merck, DSM, Solvay, WeHealth by Servier, Bpifrance and more.