Stanley names 10 startups to second accelerator cohort

Downtown Hartford’s Stanley+Techstars Additive Manufacturing Accelerator has named 10 startups to its second annual class hailing from the U.S. and three other countries.

Stanley Black & Decker, the New Britain-based hand- and power-tool giant, and Colorado-based accelerator-investor TechStars, on Monday said the entrepreneurs have relocated to Stanley’s three-month-old Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence — known as “Manufactory 4.0” — a 23,000-square-foot facility at One Constitution Plaza in downtown Hartford. 

Participants will develop their products in Hartford over the next 13 weeks in preparation for a Demo Day pitch event on Oct. 10 held at The Bushnell Performing Arts Center.

Stanley said it reviewed applications from more than 30 countries before landing on startups based in California, Texas, New York City, Somerville, Mass., Spain, Germany and India.

Almost half of the startups have a female founder, according to organizers, who noted that only 3 percent of venture funding goes to female-led companies.

The 2019 Stanley+Techstars class includes the following:

• Accelerate3D (Texas): Manufactures large 3-D printers that print 10 times faster than the market standard.
• CRASTE (India): Builds sustainable products for packaging from waste crop residue.
• Boxologic (Massachusetts): Creates robotic, instant, packaging for e-commerce fulfillment.
• NVEarth (Texas): Produces bio-based lubricants, cleaners and absorbents.
• OCCO (New York): Provides molecularly fresher ingredients in sustainable packaging.
• Prinsta (New York): Develops circuit board printers for desktop use.
• Triditive (Spain): Developed the first automated industrial hybrid additive manufacturing machine for mass production.
• Tuffel (California): Builds power tools.      
• Umeleon (Germany): Provides customized filaments for fused deposition modeling 3-D printers.
• WOMP (New York): An AI-powered platform for generating, interacting and manufacturing objects

Several startups in the accelerator’s inaugural cohort last year decided to remain in Hartford after completing the program due to the lower commercial overhead and living costs downtown compared to other potential landing spots in the U.S.

This story has been updated