The leaders of HorizonX, a new subdivision of Boeing set up by the U.S. aerospace giant to search the world for startups offering revolutionary ideas, visited the Skolkovo innovation centre last week, where they were introduced to seven Skolkovo startups.
Representatives of the Skolkovo Foundation meet with colleagues from HorizonX at the Boeing training and research centre at the Skolkovo innovation centre last week. Photo: Sk.ru.
Skolkovo is one of the first international locations chosen by HorizonX’s leadership to visit in search of innovative ideas. Boeing and Skolkovo have been carrying out joint activities since 2010, and in June 2016, Boeing opened a state-of-the-art aviation training and research centre at Skolkovo.
“Having Boeing’s aviation training and research centre in the innovations city has had a significant influence on the Skolkovo ecosystem,” said Igor Drozdov, chairman of the board of the Skolkovo Foundation.
“The centre is gradually becoming a magnet for all the ecosystem’s participants, from our startups and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) to major industrial partners which, like Boeing, have opened research centres at Skolkovo. Our task is to facilitate the development of technologies, and the fact that today representatives of the leadership of HorizonX – the subdivision responsible for innovations – are visiting the Boeing aviation centre makes up hopeful that this visit will be the start of a new chapter in our cooperation.”
The representatives of HorizonX saw solutions designed by seven Skolkovo startups during the visit: Aeroxo, Bestplace, Aerostate, Datadvance, Group-IB, RoboCV and VideoMatrix.
Sergei Kravchenko, president of Boeing in Russia and the CIS, said the U.S. company was very pleased to be cooperating with Skolkovo.
“We’re interested in jointly searching for innovative ideas, since this will open up significant opportunities for Boeing’s development as a global industrial leader,” he said.
HorizonX’s mission includes monitoring new business models, market trends and technologies, as well as using the vast potential of the world’s biggest aerospace corporation to develop relationships with startups. Through HorizonX, Boeing plans to finance new enterprises and launch incubator programmes.