SEATTLE – The 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab), a global ecosystem of developers, enterprises, academia and government institutions, today announced its strategy to broaden the Lab's reach beyond the U.S. to attract international start-ups and ecosystem members and strategic partners focused on advancing global standards for 5G software application development across enterprise platforms.

Said Jim Brisimitzis, General Partner of the 5G Open Innovation Lab, "Our vision for the next-generation enterprise depends on global cooperation to ensure technology standards for IoT and cloud computing that ensures interoperability and efficiency across diverse network platforms. The Lab is actively seeking start-ups with solutions that address these challenges and strategic partners that can help us broaden our reach to Asia, Europe and Latin America."

Operating both in Europe and the U.S., Moeco (www.moeco.io) was selected as a member of the 5G Open Innovation Lab as part of the Fall 2020 batch of 16 companies. Moeco's mission is to digitize the physical assets and products to help companies manage their operations in a new, digital way. The solution is designed to streamline the supply chain and logistics while delivering business insight through real-time data analytics.

"As an international startup, we heavily rely on the development of 5G technology to revolutionize logistics. It is essential for our mission - to digitize the universe one enterprise at a time," said Alexa Sinyachova, co-founder of Moeco. "The 5G Open Innovation Lab helps us to resolve one of the major problems of modern supply chains. When a big producer lets its parcel go into the big world, it becomes a sort of a 'Schrödinger's' parcel – not knowing if it is still in transit or lost or destroyed until its arrival to its final destination. With new communication standards, we hope we can teach physical assets how to speak, report and signal if something wrong is happening to them – to generate insights and allow optimization of critical processes."

Kubermatic (www.kubermatic.com), a German-based cloud computing company, was also selected by the Lab as a member of the Fall 2020 batch of companies. Kubermatic's platform automates the operations of Kubernetes clusters across multi-cloud, on-premises, and edge environments with a single management UI, addressing the operational challenge of running Kubernetes at scale. Kubermatic customers include Lufthansa, Bosch, Siemens, and T-Systems.

The Lab selects 15 to 20 companies twice a year to join the Lab's ecosystem of technology leaders and partners. The Lab does not take an equity position in its member companies, rather, companies collaborate with 5G technology experts and business advisors through CEO and CTO roundtables, private working sessions, virtual networking and social events, and opportunities to meet with the Lab's extensive partner network of venture capital firms.

Said Brisimitzis, "We are not a traditional incubator or accelerator. We exist to help foster innovation that will enable us to drive real-world applications and solutions that are economically viable, marketable, and fundable. This requires a global view and strategy that addresses the need for international standards for edge computing and the transformation of telco networks to full-featured, application development and delivery platforms."

The Lab is currently seeking companies to join its Spring 2021 program which will kick-off in March of next year.

5G Open Innovation Lab