These start-ups have a chance of winning the Future Hamburg Award

Ten European start-ups have qualified for the final of the Hamburg competition. The decision will be made on 10 June.

With the Future Hamburg Award, the City of Hamburg is honouring sustainable, innovative start-ups in the fields of mobility, logistics and hydrogen for the second time. The ideas of the ten finalist teams range from AI-based software to reduce air pollution and CO2 emissions, to new strategies and technologies for plastic avoidance, to a sustainable mobility solution via which every vehicle can be powered by solar energy. The finalists on the shortlist come from Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and France. Startups from 15 countries had applied in total

"It's great to see with how much commitment and unique ideas each of the startups is tackling the pressing issues of the future," says Michael Westhagemann, Hamburg's Senator for Economics and Innovation. "With this award, we help young founders become visible and give the best startups in the world the chance to test their promising ideas with us."

Three of the ten finalists will be selected by an international jury over the next two weeks to be invited by the "Startup-Unit Hamburg" to a three-day trip in the Hanseatic city. The first place winner will also win a four-week participation in the international accelerator program from award partner Plug and Play in Silicon Valley.

The start-ups on the shortlist are:

- Breeze Technologies from Germany provides local air quality data and AI-based decision support for air pollution control measures.

- Cirplus from Germany is a managed marketplace for the plastics recycling industry and offers procurement as a service.

- Everimpact from France helps cities and ports track their carbon footprint in real time, certify their emissions reductions and generate revenue from their carbon reduction projects.

- Geckomatics from Belgium builds mobile mapping systems based on machine learning that create digital twins of public space.

- Horizer from Germany offers a solar mobility solution by placing the flexible, ultra-thin solar films on the roof of the vehicle and connecting them to the vehicle battery.

- Infinite Mobility from Norway is developing lightweight, solar-powered vehicles suitable for urban mobility.

- Natix from Germany makes cameras smart and video surveillance GDPR compliant.

- Papair from Germany is developing innovative technologies to produce sustainable packaging materials such as a "paper bubble wrap" that combines cost efficiency, cushioning and sustainability.