These midsized companies bring fresh thinking to quietly important jobs
Equipment has always needed maintenance. We’ve been booking travel online for years. Even using speech recognition to create on-screen captions is not exactly a breakthrough new technology. But all of these established activities have room for improvement, and these companies—each with between 500 and 999 employees—show how it’s done. AquantFor keeping complex equipment maintainedFor essential equipment such as medical devices and power generators, high uptime is a must. But even as these machines grow more intricate, the professionals who maintain them are retiring with few young people taking their places. Aquant created the Service Co-Pilot to mirror expert professionals, providing guidance that considers the complexity, context, environment, and history of each machine. It uses AI to ingest and analyze vast amounts of data, including service manuals, tutorial videos, and unstructured data such as technician notes. Spotnana For building online travel tech from the ground upThe travel industry is worth over $11 trillion, but it still largely depends on old technology. Spotnana built a cloud-based platform for booking and managing travel, integrating with airlines, hotels, ground transportation companies, and more. Aiming to serve as the AWS of the travel industry, it’s powering internal corporate travel services for companies such as Walmart as well as public-facing sites for Marriott and Qantas. VerbitFor getting all of the nuancesAnyone who reads transcripts created with automatic speech recognition knows they’re prone to the occasional caption blunder. Verbit has launched a new platform called Captivate that it says brings human-level accuracy to AI-generated transcripts. It’s built on a continuous learning model that adapts over time to specific domains as more content is captured, powering transcripts in a range of fields. The companies behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2024. See a full list of all the winners across all categories and read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
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Equipment has always needed maintenance. We’ve been booking travel online for years. Even using speech recognition to create on-screen captions is not exactly a breakthrough new technology. But all of these established activities have room for improvement, and these companies—each with between 500 and 999 employees—show how it’s done.
Aquant
For keeping complex equipment maintained
For essential equipment such as medical devices and power generators, high uptime is a must. But even as these machines grow more intricate, the professionals who maintain them are retiring with few young people taking their places. Aquant created the Service Co-Pilot to mirror expert professionals, providing guidance that considers the complexity, context, environment, and history of each machine. It uses AI to ingest and analyze vast amounts of data, including service manuals, tutorial videos, and unstructured data such as technician notes.
Spotnana
For building online travel tech from the ground up
The travel industry is worth over $11 trillion, but it still largely depends on old technology. Spotnana built a cloud-based platform for booking and managing travel, integrating with airlines, hotels, ground transportation companies, and more. Aiming to serve as the AWS of the travel industry, it’s powering internal corporate travel services for companies such as Walmart as well as public-facing sites for Marriott and Qantas.
Verbit
For getting all of the nuances
Anyone who reads transcripts created with automatic speech recognition knows they’re prone to the occasional caption blunder. Verbit has launched a new platform called Captivate that it says brings human-level accuracy to AI-generated transcripts. It’s built on a continuous learning model that adapts over time to specific domains as more content is captured, powering transcripts in a range of fields.
The companies behind these technologies are among the honorees in Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech awards for 2024. See a full list of all the winners across all categories and read more about the methodology behind the selection process.
