Today we interview Pixelabs, a company specialising in artificial intelligence and computer vision solutions aimed at automating, digitalising and improving existing processes.
1. What problem does your startup address and what solution does it offer?
Pixelabs is a technology company that develops AI solutions. In 2024, we decided to focus our technological and commercial strategy on the sectors in which we have gained solid experience. One of these is the Circular Economy. AI-Waste Engine is our product for waste management and analysis using AI. It automates the real-time identification and characterisation of waste, ensuring regulatory compliance, simplifying sorting processes and improving waste recovery.
2. How and why did you start this entrepreneurial journey? Any advice for future entrepreneurs?
We began with the idea of bringing value to a sector with huge potential, and which also aims to solve a real problem with a positive social and environmental impact. Our solution can be integrated into plants without altering existing operations. We focused on a very specific use case —waste treatment— to design a plug-and-play solution.
Our advice: first identify a very specific problem and make sure your technology can be integrated easily; this greatly facilitates system adoption.
3. What have been the main obstacles you’ve encountered along the way?
The biggest challenge has been training the AI to correctly recognise and estimate the weight of materials with changing characteristics in a complex environment (different waste types, weather variations, humidity), and calibrating the system for highly heterogeneous waste streams. We also aim to ensure an integration process that doesn’t stop production — something that has been key to convincing operators.
4. How do you expect the sector to evolve? And what are your expectations for your startup?
It is very likely that in the coming years we will see truly “intelligent” waste treatment plants, with precise control over material flows and efficient automation. Increasing regulatory requirements around waste recovery will make compliance essential. One of our goals is to position ourselves as the brain behind the camera. As you know, our AI technology is hardware-independent, which offers huge scalability.
We want our product to become a standard for all plants looking to make the leap towards simple and fully integrated digitalisation.
5. Any upcoming developments you would like to share with the rest of the startups?
We would like to highlight AI-Fuel Alt Cement, a product aligned with AI-Waste Engine and focused on RDF (Refuse-Derived Fuel). It is our way of “closing the loop” of the circular economy, contributing to giving a final positive use to plastic waste that, after reduction, recovery and recycling, still remains — rather than it ending up in landfill. We are currently developing and improving a module that measures parameters such as calorific value, moisture level and others. This is undoubtedly key for producing fuel derived from waste.
6. In which areas would you like to collaborate with other startups, companies or organisations?
Ideally, we are looking to form partnerships with manufacturers of hyperspectral and RGB cameras, sensors, etc. Our AI engine is hardware-independent, so being able to offer clients customised solutions is a competitive advantage. We are also interested in working with sector associations that have extensive experience, as well as with regulatory bodies to standardise our products as much as possible.
7. What advice would you give to a newly launched entrepreneur?
Based on our experience, we would say that focusing on solving a real need is the most practical and realistic way to show measurable results from the pilot stage. Something along the lines of: “Design your solution to be scalable, simple, and compatible with the client’s existing systems in order to strengthen your value proposition.”