The Startup World Cup is the largest global startup conference and pitch competition, where over 70 cities send their champion teams to the San Francisco Grand Finale to compete for a $1,000,000 investment prize. The St. Louis regional competition started with 100 companies pitching in 10 categories on April 1, 2025. The winners advanced to the Regional Finals held on Friday, August 15, 2025, at T-REX downtown. Five of the 10 finalists—Assertion AI, Atidi Farms, King of the Curve, uFab, and Zaiko—are WashU-founded startups, with Assertion AI winning the St. Louis title.
The following article was written by Samir Knox for the St. Louis Business Journal and was originally published on August 18, 2025.
A company that specializes in delivering quick artificial models to businesses that was co-founded by a Washington University graduate will represent the St. Louis region’s entrepreneurship scene at the Grand Finale of the Startup World Cup this fall.
Newly-founded Assertion AI was picked as the winner Friday from among 10 St. Louis regional finalists, which included startups in agriculture, video editing, food, AI, education and other industries. In October, the company will compete in in San Francisco at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale, where it will face off against more than 100 other startups for a chance at a $1 million investment prize.
Assertion AI co-founder Yao Shepherd said at Friday’s competition that his firm uses generative AI-based large language models, or AI models that use large data sets to generate answers, to create tools for companies that need to use their data to extrapolate potential future scenarios, often called “predictive” modeling. But Shepherd said many teams that develop those tools in house, or use outside vendors for AI modeling, often face long processes to get those models working for them.
By automating key steps in the development process with what he called a “data dictionary,” Shepherd said his company can cut the development time of an AI tool dramatically, shortening “delivery time from several months to be less than an hour.”
When he received the regional award Friday, Shepherd said he wanted to dispel misconceptions he’d heard that St. Louis was a bad city in which to start companies. After recently joining the Seattle-based AI incubator AI2, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, he said Assertion was a good example of how companies could leverage outside resources, while still maintaining St. Louis roots.
“There’s an impression that St. Louis is not a good city to start a startup in,” Shepherd said Friday. “I think our case would be a good example to a lot of investors: You don’t have to rely 100% on a lot of local investors. You can be everywhere but still operate here, leverage the resources. I wasn’t expecting any of this. But, it’s really amazing to have investors from the West Coast and they support us operating in St. Louis.”
But Friday’s event was not just about crowning Shepherd’s company as the St. Louis region’s winner of the Startup World Cup, it’s also about celebrating regional startups, said the head of local venture capital firm Stakehouse, Vik Lakhwara.
“We really want to create more opportunities like this, so keep coming out,” he said to the participants and attendees. “If you didn’t win, this is not a ‘you suck’ moment, it’s a ‘hey, how can I improve just the pitching aspect? Or what are the questions that the you know, judges asked that trip me up.’ Like, this is just a stepping stone to the next good thing, right? So, don’t be discouraged if you didn’t win.”
Lakhwara judged the pitch competition alongside former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency AI head and GeoFutures Initiative leader Mark Munsell and SixThirty Managing Partner Atul Kamra. The judges were given the opportunity to ask questions of the founders after they finished presenting.
The other regional finalists that presented were:
- uFab, a company that designs printing machines for PCB circuit boards,
- Atidi Farms, formerly known as VertiGreens, which makes fresh vegetables using hydroponics to grow year-round,
- Kwema, a company that makes discrete emergency alert devices for medical professionals,
- Zaiko, a company that helps automate bookkeeping for small grocers,
- Fufu n’ Sauce, a north city-based West African restaurant with eyes on expansion,
- CEdge Learn, an online education platform,
- Levitt Logic, a platform that ingests data from public government meeting agendas and documents to track the success of public investment,
- King of the Curve, a gamified AI-powered testing platform and
- TimeBolt, a video editing software designed to automatically edit filler words from video content without interrupting the flow of a sentence.
Shepherd said his company had seven to eight staff members that were serving as part-time “consultants,” that he was hoping to be able to “consolidate” into a set of full-time staffers. The company was founded in January, and its website links back to Premier Strategy Consulting, a locally-based consulting firm also founded by Shepherd.