Mission Throttle today announced Derq as the recipient of the $20,000 Prize for Social Impact at Accelerate Michigan’s ninth annual Innovation Competition. Sponsors awarded a total of $1 million in cash and in-kind prizes to eight innovative startups that were selected from 24 semi-finalists. Nearly 400 top investors, entrepreneurs and community leaders attended the event.
Derq is a Dubai & Detroit based MIT spin-off and Techstars alum with a mission to eliminate road accidents and save lives by using artificial intelligence. Derq can predict and prevent car accidents before anyone else on the road.
“Derq exists to make roads safer and to reduce the 1.25M lives lost due to crashes each year. A huge thank you to Mission Throttle for naming Derq as the first ever AccelerateMichigan Social Impact prize winner, and for recognizing our commitment to helping achieve ‘VisionZero!'” — Derq
Accelerate Michigan enables entrepreneurs to showcase their companies and meet one-on-one with fellow entrepreneurs, investors, business acceleration resources, and experts in their specific sector during carefully curated meetings. Since its launch in 2010, grand prize awardees of Accelerate Michigan have hired over a 1,000 people and attracted more than $650 million in additional investment.