AI for the Earth's Future | Dreampitch, Dreamforce 2025 | Salesforce

Please welcome Vice President, Talent and Culture, Salesforce, Molly Q. Ford.

Thank you.

Hello.

Hello, Dreamforce. You are now at Dream Pitch. This is the hottest ticket at Dreamforce. So whether you're joining us live here in San Francisco or live via Salesforce plus, we are here to shine a spotlight on the AI entrepreneurs that are doing good and preserving us for tomorrow. So we have an exciting program out for you. So you've been experiencing Dreamforce, and you've likely seen thought leaders and AI innovation, and you may have had the opportunity to engage with robots. Whether you took a selfie with a robot or more importantly, you saw robots that didn't doze off during the keynote. I didn't say I dozed off during the keynote. I'm saying robots don't doze off in the keynote. But the point I'm making is that we have a future that is hinged on humans and agents and collaboration, humans and agents driving customer success together. And that is the future we have ahead of us. But if you know Salesforce and you've been in our community a while, you know that our priority is doing better, being better, stewards of our resources. So with that, we've scoured the earth and we said, who are the entrepreneurs? The AI entrepreneurs of tomorrow that are preserving and making this a better world? And we have those contestants. So we have an amazing program in store for you with Dream Pitch. But first, before we get to Dream Pitch, I want to start with gratitude. And starting with gratitude, we want to thank our sponsor, Deloitte Digital. Deloitte and Salesforce. Thank you. Deloitte is not only the premier sponsor of Dream Pitch, they're a pioneer sponsor of Dreamforce. And because of that, we've been able to enjoy a history of a long relationship with Deloitte. So I want to invite up Dunya Sinawi. And Dunya's going to come up, and she's also one of our judges. Well, great to see you. My favorite color, blue.

Thank you.

And absolutely, we've had this long, rich history of Salesforce and Deloitte doing well in the world, but also making sure we're taking care of San Francisco, impacting home in a positive way. Tell us about the magic of that relationship.

Well, we do. We've had this amazing, long standing alliance, and what makes it so special is really the values that we share. Trust, innovation, this really deep commitment to customer success. And as we live out those values, we help our customers redefine experiences, advance sustainability, implement AI responsibly. And we've made a $4 billion commitment in data and AI to help our customers achieve their outcomes. And we love working with Salesforce because together we push the boundaries of what's possible.

Absolutely. And let's talk about. Well, first of all, $4 million.

$4 billion.

Do y' all not get impressed with much? What does your bonus look like? If you like. Oh, four million. That's all y' all had today anyways. Tell us more about people and planet.

Well, we talked a little bit about values. We feel that we have this responsibility to make a positive impact on people and the planet, and we're doing that right here in San Francisco with yes sf. It's an initiative where we're collaborating together. Deloitte, Salesforce, Citi, the World Economic Forum, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. And we've come together to harness innovation and make San Francisco more sustainable, sustainable, more inclusive. So we've got this amazing hub of innovation that brings people together with a lot of passion and purpose to tackle renewable energy, clean air, and it's making a huge impact. So I'm super excited to see our AI change makers take the stage with that same purpose and passion.

Perfect. I want to hear more about yesssf. Let's view a video of them.

Uplink and yes, San Francisco are critical because I'm opened up to this entirely new network of humans that can help me do the same work that I did in New York in an entirely different geographic space. And then that's what can help basically seed these ideas across countries.

It's bringing together stakeholders from policy, from.

Other innovators, from startups, all collectively tackling.

A very big problem together.

But we need to be bullish. We can't be shy, we can't be slow. We need to try things.

We have the tools.

We have everything we need to make these changes happen. And we need to do it with immediacy.

Thank you, Deloitte's Chief Commercial Officer and our first judge of today. I'll get to the rules of Dream pitch in a second, but first I want to bring up our judges. We have an expert panel of judges that are here to look at our entrepreneurs and their pitches. So a trailblazer, a powerhouse, and Forbes number one most influential CMO, the one and only Bozema St. John. Come on. I just want to call you Badass Bose.

So Badass.

Badass Bose.

I love that.

Awesome. And then last but not least, he's the host of the Profit the Fixer, and he's the deal maker that changes a struggling business into a success story. Marcus Lemonis, our third judge.

Yes.

So, judges, how you're feeling?

Awesome.

Oh, you're ready. They got clipboards. You know you official when you have a clipboard, nobody says boss like a clipboard. So Dream Pitch, right? We've scoured the earth and we said, who are the entrepreneurs that are absolutely harnessing AI for good, using AI as change makers? And we found three powerful contestants we're going to bring up. And there's another thing we're going to do. We're going to do after the pitch. What does that mean? We're going to hear from last year's Dream Pitch winner to understand innovations that these Dream Pitch winners are bringing. Right. If we think about things they've done with carbon footprints, improving carbon footprints and safety and translating mental health services. So you're also going to hear from them. But folks are going to be judged on three things. 10 points for innovation, 10 points for scalability, and 10 points for impact, their AI impact. But more importantly, you all get to be judges, too. We don't have a stool for you. Stay where you are. But you're going to get to judge right from your seat. We're going to put up a QR code and you'll be able to judge which entrepreneur is your favorite. And that will give this contestant a five point edge. So not many keynotes you get to vote on. Did you vote on Monday's keynote, Tuesday's keynote? I think you didn't.

You're welcome.

You have a job here. So innovation, scalability, impact, and then the audience favorite. So, judges, we're feeling good about this?

Yes, yes, yes.

All right, without further ado, we're going to bring up our first contestant, Mr. Daniel White from Gentian. He's the co founder and CEO of Gentian. Daniel, come on up.

Yeah.

Come on, Dan.

Good morning.

Morning.

Okay, I'm going to start with two words that are going to be really important in the next decade. Biodiversity and nature. These are the ultimate environmental currency. And without them, everything falls apart. So how valuable are these words? Well, $58 trillion of business is at risk from nature loss at the moment, which is half of the world's gdp. So that's the size of the problem. And we've seen three quarters of animal populations lost in the last 50 years. So this is a dour start to my presentation. So imagine if you go to a football stadium, which is full at the start of the game, and then the game is 50 years long, and by the end of the game, the stadium is empty, and three quarters of the seats are empty. That is. Sorry. At the end of the game, three quarters of the seats are empty. That's how fast wildlife is disappearing. At the moment, it's in critical state. And why is this important to us? Well, nature underpins food, medicine, water, even the wood and the desks that we work on. Everything around us in fact. Trees cooling the cities in the summertime. So it's extremely valuable to each of our lives. The problem is we can't measure it and we can't comprehend it as individuals. So how do we measure nature? We send people out into the field to go and collect information, and it takes a long time, and by the time they get back, the landscape has changed. This is where we come in. So we're using ultra high resolution satellite imagery to measure nature in three minutes. This is unprecedented in the world. And we're even able to see a coffee cup from above, or we can see Boz's wonderful head from space.

Not hard.

We're not working with the fuzzy imagery. So we're able to see extremely precise information. And that allows us to map ecosystems very precisely. In addition to that, the secret sauce here is we're using infrared light. So we're looking at plants under infrared light. And when you see plants under infrared light, they offer a kaleidoscope of information. As you can see by the image, we can tell species richness, we can tell how healthy the ecosystem is. All sorts of information based upon how we train the colors to our model. And that's how we're using AI. So think of this like facial recognition for plants. We collect the data and we provide a subscription service to organizations that need this. So why is this good for business? Why do business need this? Well, fundamentally, we're dealing with a complex, a huge and an urgent problem. And so for businesses, this means they can avoid risk, so regulatory risk. There could be issues of pr, branding. A lot of this stuff is starting to come through now. We're now seeing Fortune 500 companies asking us to map their global asset portfolios. We're getting a lot of inbound at the moment. And as a company, we had $1 million of revenue last year, and about 40% of that is recurring. So this is an example of a crematorium to keep the dower flavor going. So as you can see, this piece of land here, they built a crematorium. The biodiversity units went down, which is a score that we've used. And then as they planted a wildflower meadow and an orchard, the biodiversity went up. So we can give this kind of information to businesses to help them make better decisions about how they interact with nature. But this is only the beginning. How do we motivate a change? And this is where behavioral economics start to come into the picture. So now we're putting our data, our AI collected data and framing it to businesses so we can tell them how they're performing against regional or national averages so that they can be motivated to make a difference in the right way that suits their land. So I'd just like to close with. This is a really important moment in our history where nature becomes the biggest risk to society or it could be the biggest opportunity for our future. And that's why we exist. We want to start laying the foundations of understanding this complex issue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome. How did that feel?

It was okay.

It was better than okay. So, judges, I'm going to start with you, Marcus.

No, don't start with me.

Oh, don't start. Love it. He said don't start with me.

Seriously.

I don't know what. I don't know what you're asking us to consider. I don't. I didn't understand it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, so the issue that we meet in an elevator.

Yep.

There's 10 floors. That takes about 14 seconds.

Okay.

I just need to hear it really succinctly what it is.

Nature is really valuable.

What are you asking us to do? What do you want investment money for? What do you.

I want investment money to build that. Behavioral economics for what? To solve. So that we can help businesses to change the way that they manage land in a way that it's more nature friendly. So that creates value for the whole of society.

And how are you going to do that?

And we're going to do that with software. We're going to do that by providing a subscription service to organizations to enable them to understand nature better.

So what I hear right now is I'm going to use technology to collect data.

Yes.

I'm going to use that data to democratize information so that other people can understand what the best practices are to get the highest yield.

Yeah.

What I heard.

That's right. That's right.

I want you to say that next time.

Okay.

All the other stuff is great. I just didn't understand what you were asking us to consider.

Thank you.

Sorry. That's why I said I'll go.

Last valid. That was valid.

Buzzkill. Yeah.

I would have said a picture of the earth. Right. And then I saw the crematorium model was really good. That one brought it kind of home for me. But I'm with you.

Okay.

Okay. Both.

I like the infrared picture. I thought that was very good. I guess my question is that who are you trying to target? Is it the CEOs of the companies? Is it everyday people? You know, because obviously as a marketer, it's like, look, I believe in like the masses creating change because they are inspired by something. So I guess maybe to piggyback off of that question, it's like, if you're trying to get to CEOs, that's one thing. If you're trying to get to the masses, that's another. So how would you make this colloquial enough for everyday person to understand if that is your target?

So this is definitely a B2B solution at the moment. So it's the decision makers within those organizations who care or are responsible for land Management. So CEOs are perfectly perfect. We've had conversations with CEOs, but fundamentally it's more to do with the sustainability of the environmental teams or in some cases, it's now moving into the tech side because of the AI element. And through those doors, we're able to offer subscription services to those businesses that allow them to bring our data into their asset management and make better decisions internally.

Okay, awesome. Dunya.

All right. If a global brand or a government entity approached you and wanted to collaborate, what would an effective partnership look like for you?

Wow. I think we. Well, we would be able to. It depends. It's a two way street really. I mean, we can help that brand really understand their impact on nature. So, for example, really get into the detail of how that brand is impacting nature across the portfolio.

The global brand is Deloitte. Pretend it's Deloitte.

Do they have lots of money or.

A technology like Salesforce?

They got money.

How would you create an ecosystem?

Sorry, could you.

How would you create an ecosystem? Or how would a partnership really help fuel your company forward?

So we would be able to bring the financing from that organization to perhaps offer better interest rates on the financing that they're providing their customers based upon how they're impacting nature. We're seeing financial markets move in this way. So for example, insurance companies or banks are offering preferential rates on on financing for farmers who are putting nature onto their land as well. So that's a great way to bring a brand and us together. We can help monitor that.

Got it. You talked a little bit about Fortune 500 companies. Maybe talk to us a little bit about early adopters of customer segments.

So this has been largely regulation driven. So there's a framework called tnfd, which is the Task Force for Nature Related Financial Disclosure. And that is pushing a lot of Fortune 500 companies to start mapping nature across all of their portfolios, largely so that they can alleviate risk down the line. Nature offers a barrier to other. Lots of other weather risks or climate risks and whatnot, but it's also good for branding as well on their part. We all want to be friendly for nature and we all love it. We just can't measure it.

Okay.

Absolutely. Daniel, thank you so much. I've got one more question.

I just want to say one more thing. This really applies to any business in this room. If you're a small business owner or a medium business owner or a large business owner like you, efficacy is clear to me of what you're doing and the purpose and the value of what you're doing for humanity is crystal clear. But the purpose of the capitalistic nature of what you're doing isn't clear. And I think anytime you're looking to raise significant amount of capital, earnestness sometimes puts you at the back of the line. And so it has to be clear, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? How am I making money? How is the investor making money or the grant provider getting a yield. And yield doesn't always have to be a return on capital. It could be something positive happens in the environment. I'd just like to see efficacy is clear, clarity on your message. I think there's a lot of room for improvement.

Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. Daniel from gente.

Yeah, thank you. Awesome.

Now that Marcus has taken us all to business school, I want to welcome our second guest up here. Right, so we have Jumana Voltaire from Voltaire AI. Come on. Jomana al hashim.

Are we supposed to.

Morning.

Good morning, dreamers. Speaking of morning, I want you to think of your family's morning routine. The breakfast table. Orange juice, milk, maybe some fresh flowers, maybe some vegan cream cheese, a pear.

Thank you.

Insulin shot or your spouse's very expensive day cream. What do all these products have in common? Well, they've all had to travel on a refrigerator truck on their way to. You ever buy a piece of fruit and it lasts two weeks in the fridge and you buy an identical looking piece of fruit and maddeningly, it goes bad in two days.

Why?

Why is that happening? Well, it is precisely because temperature sensitive goods go on and off trucks multiple times on their way to you. And products like berries are sensitive to a quarter degree of temperature variation. And it's precisely in these moments of loading, unloading truck is stuck in traffic with microclimates. If you are unfamiliar with the term microclimates, our beautiful city of San Francisco is about to give a crash course on that. But my point is that during these points of transitions is when products experience most temperature violations and each temperature violation comes with a huge reduction in shelf life. We lose a third of all the product that we food that we produce on earth. And that is both a tragedy and huge loss loss in financial yield. You use smart thermostats to control your own home. But trucks that are moving our food and medicine require driver intervention and telus. After products have left the safe zone that they're supposed to be in. And we want to change that, we are creating a smart autonomous platform refrigeration transport refrigeration system. That's solar electric. Our proprietary System collects over 70 data points live from the truck from our own sensors. We augment that with weather data and traffic data and feed it to AI and ML algorithms in order to learn hyperlocal patterns that allow us to make live decision based on live data on the truck without intervention. What does that really mean in real life though? What does that mean for me as a business? Well, it means we can pre cool these boxes at night when electric energy is cheapest. It means we can predict when a component is going to fail and ship your replacement part way before it actually fails. On the road between improvements to operations, maintenance, liability and insurance, we can save our customers about 60% of their total cost of ownership. And this is not theoretical. We have been working with one of the largest cold chain facilities, learning very fast from customers, iterating on our product, making changes to it. And we are on track to do our first production pilots by end of this year. But it's not just about controlling temperature. Having software defined remotely controlled systems like that unlocks an entire future of autonomous logistics for temperature controlled goods, both hot and and cold. At the end of that, when we achieve this, what we end up with is the most affordable and scalable refrigeration system. In essence democratizing access to refrigeration to millions of small businesses and farms across the globe who are on less reliable grids. Whether you are an oyster farmer out here in Point Reyes, California or a tomato farmer in and the outskirts of Entebbe, Uganda. We got you. At the end of the day, we hope that we are saving more than bottom lines, that we're making sure there's enough around the table for everyone. Thank you. Shukran.

Shamana. That was amazing. How did that feel?

Amazing. It was so good to be in.

All right, Bose, any questions? We know we got you with vegan cream cheese. I know.

I was like, perk up, Steve. That's a great marketing tool because you made it very personal to me and I appreciate that. So I'm trying to understand whether or not the tool or the system is, is it that you're creating new vehicles or you're creating attachments to existing vehicles.

So it's a, it's, it goes on any truck, classes four to eight, and it's a system that attaches to the box. If you walk around San Francisco today, you'll notice box trucks with refrigeration units attached to them that are diesel based, that are not smart. So we've designed the system to be a drop in replacement. So we're backwards compatible with ICE fleets, but we are forward compatible as well with EV fleets.

And what's the price comparison to what is available today? Is it going to be extraordinarily expensive for smaller companies to utilize?

That's the whole point is we want to make something that's extraordinarily affordable, better than anything that's on the market right now. For refrigeration, you have to buy the refrigeration itself. There's the diesel cost, the maintenance cost is very prohibitive. The reliability is very low. And if you are a large company and you want to get any data out of that into your own systems, you have to add a slew of SAs and sensors and a number of other things. So we're a one shop solution that goes on any truck. And with this way we can make the cost actually considerably lower. So when we say 60% total cost of ownership reduction, that's very meaningful to small businesses. And that means I can for the very first time actually have a refrigerated truck and not be terrified that having a refrigerated truck is going to be a business burden on me for the next day.

Yeah, the rationale makes so much sense. Like I really understood it. I love it. It's great.

Thank you.

Okay, Dunya, maybe talk to us a little bit about the boldest strategic or technical risk that you've taken with the company so far and what you learned about it.

The boldest, most technical risk could be.

Strategic or technical, either or any risk as a leader.

I mean, starting a whole business in this environment is a little risky, especially if it's climate based. But I think the biggest risk that we took on is actually being hardware Right. Everybody wants you to be a software company, but unfortunately you can't really change the world. You can't sass your problems away. Things need to get to a breakfast table. Insulin needs to get into a syringe. So you can't exactly. You have to do a hardware. And I think the decision to do hardware company, being a person from a software background was, was the hardest decision. But luckily I managed to find a co founder, Grant Chateau, who's not with me here today, unfortunately. But he brings that hardware expertise and together we bring a team that's very uniquely situated to present something new to the market.

Wonderful.

Right. And Marcus, questions? Comments?

I want you to take stock in Bose's question that she first asked, which is having clarity around what it is that you're presenting. And so you went through the whole process and she had to ask what is it that you're selling? And so I want you to take some stock in that the next time you do this.

Excellent.

I think the thing that I like, that I think you could better articulate is who are the winners in the whole supply chain process? How do people actually win from a capital standpoint? And if we started with the consumer, they're going to get a better quality product and they're going to be appreciative of the sustainability of what you're trying to do. If we went backwards and we went to the, to the LTL carrier, the truck that's moving it in this particular technology, they're going to eliminate liability for them for being accused of having damage during transportation. So it's a liability risk, it's a de risker for them, essentially creating a better experience, creating better stickiness for their business. And then you go back to the original producer and their ultimate retention of customers and satisfaction of the end user is going to be a function of the quality of the product when it arrives at the end. And so what I think you've done very well, but could clarify more is there always has to be clarity around who the winners are financially and then if there's a byproduct of sustainability or quality, that to me is an additive. I thought you did a great job of outlining the sustainability piece, but I want Bose's question going forward to be a little bit more addressed head on. This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I do it, and this is how we make money and everybody else does too.

Taking the feedback to heart. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lana. Co founder and CEO and you still Voltaire AI Right here in San Francisco. So our third contestant in her pitch. We're ready for you, Barinda. Barinda is our final AI change maker. Co founder and CEO of tersa, Barinda Rissodi. Come on up.

Thank you everyone. Thank you to Salesforce and Uplink for this opportunity. I fundamentally believe that when we know better, we should do better and know better place. Did I have to do that in a really hard way than being a mom? Being a mom is so much a part of who I am that when I ran for mayor my slogan was one tough mother. One tough mother. Because resilience and a fierce love for people and the planet we live on. So what are we doing? We are taking the ultimate tough mother, Mother Nature and combining her with AI and automation to be able to extract metals and clean water. Why is that important? Because we are looking at stats that are horrific where one in four people won't have clean water. We are looking at a world where we won't have the critical minerals to meet our energy transition. So what matters. What matters is our partners. People who have believed in us. BHP Water Challenge Think and act differently program Newmont Mine who we've got a government grant with. Look, see. I can do AI and microbes but I can't do a clicker Repsol because accidentally we discovered we can do the pretreatment of brine for lithium extraction. Modis, our design firm once they audited the scalability of the tech. They are one of our top 10 shareholders because. Because they cut a check. World Economic Forum Opportunities Network and a global vision on a global problem ubc. That's where the research started for Brim, which is the Peter Bradshaw Institute of Mining. He not only funded the research, he has been in every round Foresight. Canada picked us as one of the most investable companies. But the two I'm most proud of are the stewards of the land which is the SEIK and Dene First Nations. They would like salmon and moose to run for seven more generations and they need us to do better. So why us? Why now? We are the right team, we have the right opportunity and it is the right time. Because we cannot wait. We are already behind. We have a proven scalable technology with the neutralization and the metal recovery with microbes, little bugs and we have commercial traction. We are generating revenue from our customers for pre pilot work and also very excited that our process ultimately is circular. And now it's become a conversation about our national security. Who would have thought? And so we're a very strategic and capable Team. Now we have this perfect storm. Companies are asked by government to clean up the toxic water. At the same time we're demanding more of them. And while they have their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, we have a solution that generates revenue as soon as we are deployed. We charge per liter of water which is cheaper than what they are using now. And then what we do is we do a rev share. So when we make money, they make money and we grow together. Why is this important? This is important because these untrapped resources like gold, silver, copper and not just because I'm an Indian woman and we own more gold than anybody in the world. Data centers, hospital equipment and our phones. Is there anybody in here who doesn't have a phone? We all know the answer to that. And electrification net zero. And moving forward, we're not going to do it without critical minerals. Then we are desalinating the ocean. Why are we doing that? Why are we going into ecosystems that we shouldn't be touching? Because there's no way for industry to be able to recycle water. Very simple. We have a process. It's like a strainer. We put in the toxic water, the sludge, the arsenic and cyanide. What comes out is clean water and metals, all microbial fuel cells and AI. Our revenue model is easy SaaS we do a rev share. There's no big capex for the company because we'll license out our units and what we will be able to do is give the world what it needs for a future. With AI and data collection and the data we've collected, we're not only optimizing our units, we are prolonging mine life for companies adding to their revenue and AI can monitor the health of our bugs. What I need now is easy. We need a partner who will help us with co development and help us with our next race. We're asking for $10 million. Have done all this on 6.5 and the risk, I'll tell you is I have no C suite and it's all this fabulous technical team that has built out this great platform. Thank you.

Thank you.

Marinda Russode how did that feel? How did that feel?

That felt really good. You know it's a big stage, it's a big opportunity and we're kind of like agent force, right? Our platform, we've got our customers. So I had all these new ideas in my head. You know what they say to startups, Focus, focus, focus.

Oh, I love that. Okay, we're going to start over here.

With you Junia, I'd love to learn a little bit more about how your process is distinct from other remediation methods. You talked a little bit about the strainer, you talked a little bit about your model. But I'm having a hard time just understanding how it's distinct from others.

Yeah. What we have is we are blessed that we're able to build on the many years of research for microbial fuel cells. The first part of our process that actually extracts the metal where the microbes act like eels. The that is through microbial fuel cell and mfc. The second part is the MICP which neutralizes the toxins out of the water and the byproduct that potentially can be used for fertilizer or for sustainable building materials. So we are a full circular process. So it's a shipping container. It doesn't impede with the mine's current process. What I say to mining companies is we're not asking you to change what you're doing. Let us enhance what you're doing. Because honestly they've done a lot of work to figure out their budgets and what's best. And we're saying just let us make it better for you.

What would it take for a competitor to catch up to what you've invested in?

So I'm saying this with great humility. I actually believe that no one company is going to be able to singularly clear up this mess. There's $3.4 trillion worth of waste trapped in these metals. There's, there is the sludge, there's the soil destabilization, there is the rock. So what we are asking for is to co develop and layer on technologies like blockchain. Then we can say we have ethically sourced metals because that is something mining companies weren't able to do before until we changed how things can be done. Helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Marcus.

I think tell me if this is right or wrong. The reason, the best way to address her question is that the remediation TAM is how big?

Yes. Thank you. Yes. So there are 9,000 tailing ponds around the world. 20 billion in North America alone. Not only the critical minerals and metals. Mining companies and governments have huge liability on their books from these closed tailing ponds. We saw the breach in Brazil that killed 226 people. We saw a breach in Africa a couple of months ago where it took out an entire river. And so the cost of not doing it is much greater. But we have now brought it down to a per liter cleaning of water which is $10, which is cheaper now and then we don't use the line, which is a massive cost for companies and create sludge because I think ultimately.

All three of them did an exceptional job of identifying a category that has limitless tam. That's the first thing. One question. It's true or false? We make money by proving that the parts are more valuable than the whole.

Yes.

Tell me why that's true.

Because our system two pronged, we can either do remediation or metal extraction. The source is self powered microbial bugs that create a current. We also change the mines process not from their operations, but what they have to do to clean up right now, which is like Lyme trucking in the Lyme all the carbon that is added to all of those things. So yes, we can take pieces. For Newmont we just did water remediation. And for BHP we worked with them on extraction of metals. And for Repsol, the pretreatment of the brine for lithium.

So a contaminated product can yield a valuable product in multiple forms.

Absolutely. And so I know this term is used a lot and I didn't use it which is turn waste into wealth, but that term is actually quite true. Immigrant child. I had to fold my sandwich bags and bring them home every day because they should have been reused. And less than those pennies add up over months and months. And I think that's a new mindset that we all need to work together on.

You should use that line as your opening salvo. We turn waste into wealth because people can conceptualize what that means to them. You're going to take garbage and recycle it. You're going to clean something, you're going to do something and then make money. So I would start with that.

Awesome. And both.

Yes.

So here's the thing. I'm a storyteller, right? And so you got me in the first two seconds when you were talking about being a mother. Okay. I was like, yes, mama, go. But it got lost somewhere in the storytelling around your narrative. Unlike the other two presentations, I actually think that yours is the closest to what will make masses want to champion the idea. Because if you are a parent, if you care about hell your own thirst, you want to make sure that there is protection for your own consumption. That there is this challenge that okay, maybe you can go without food, but you definitely can't go without water. And I think that that's a story that is missing in this which could actually make people food feel even more empathetic and therefore cause mass excitement about what you're doing. And influence those that you're trying to influence. You know, it's like it's the basic thing, right? You make everybody champion something so that the ones who have the decision making power then can move because they want to please the masses too. And so I just wonder if that has been a consideration for you or how you're going to democratize the idea so that more people can champion yours.

Well, excellent question and excellent comments. And so one of the things that we decided to do, we've raised $6.5 million to date. 90% of that's gone to the technology, 10% to lawyers, accounts, and rents. I don't have a marketing department. I don't have a C suite. Just brought on a fractional cfo. Because what was really important to the team was to make sure that the technology could be proven with the customers that we currently have. And so. Absolutely. And then. And I got really excited when I got here and remember to pull a thread through a story. But then there was so much I wanted to talk about that I had to stop myself. Plus, after Thanksgiving dinner, maybe I shouldn't talk about my kids all that much because they have really long lists of what I should do differently, and I'm not ready to deal with that. So kind of cut them out of the picture as soon as I could.

Aw.

Thank you so much, Miranda. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

So we're getting ready to vote. Y' all get ready. So I just want to remind us what's at stake here. $200,000 to our winners. Our judges are tallying their votes based off innov, innovation, scalability, and AI impact. Now, you audience, grab this QR code and make sure you vote for your favorite entrepreneur. And please, please, please, we ask you to only vote one time. So while we're tallying up those votes, I told you we're going to do after the pitch, bring up an AI change maker that has done some amazing things. So let's bring up Christian Van Meren. Come on up, Christian. They would clap for you, but they're so busy voting. So don't think anything of it. So you're the founder and CEO of Excess Materials, and you're back here on this stage. How does it feel to be back here?

I mean, it's great to be back home.

All right, this is home. So tell us. Tell us about your innovation. And you're the winner of Dream Pitch last year. Tell us what you've been working on.

You know, last year's Dream Pitch wasn't just a Pitch. But what I experienced was the power that AgentForce has to transform our business. So what we do with our organization is that we match what some companies would consider as waste, but other companies can use again. And so for that, we create what they call digital product passports. It's a big thing, especially in Europe these days. But those passports are a very static data set. And so what AgentForce allows us to do is to allow our users to interact with that data in a very interactive way. So it no longer is that static database so they can ask questions to their own Data. And what AgentForce also can do is make bids for them, look for high value next uses. And so what we've been doing with Inspire AI, their London team, is to get all of our data in AgentForce and then turn it into something that our users can interact with in a very active manner. And I mean, we just started, and what you're seeing right now, I think is a very simple example of it, but the potential of that is just limitless. I mean, for us, I got to be honest, it's a real game changer.

Awesome. Tell us more about this. So go ahead.

So what we're seeing right now in our initial tests is that with the use of Agent Force, the amount of time that we spend on curating this data and on making these matches happen decreases by about 90%. And that's a big deal, because what that does is it makes materials that would otherwise be, let's say, economically less interesting all of a sudden more interesting because the transaction costs are going down. And so at the same time, because we no longer have to deal with people looking for matches, these AI agents are constantly looking for new solutions for these materials. So you would have your data on the platform. And it's not just sitting there because these AI agents are actively looking into this data and are finding matches for you. So they'll be prompting you to say, look, hey, I found this company that's close to you that is interested in this material. And so what that does is it just increases the scope of our platform enormously and actually at the same time reducing cost. So the impact potential of that is just. Yeah, is insane. I'm really excited about this. This is a real game changer.

Your excitement is oozing. Thank you so much. And congratulations on being last year's dream pitch winner.

Thanks.

Thank you. And so if you want to be like our friend Christian, take advantage of the Salesforce launchpad. We have a QR code here as well. And you can absolutely take advantage of that and learn how to get on our platform and connect with our VCs in that following. So we have some very good news. I'm gonna. We're closing voting. Everybody got your one vote in. Judges votes have been tallied. But first I want to talk to our entrepreneurs. But guess what? I have some good news.

What's the news?

Instead of just $200,000 to the first winner, we're now going to make sure everyone is a winner. So the two runner ups will receive $100,000 investment.

Yes.

And that dream pitch winner will go home with the 200,000. So in a minute, I'm gonna invite our contestants back up. But tell us how you feeling? How did that feel for you?

Amazing. And it's amazing to see so many with passion, purpose, pushing boundaries. So happy to be a part of it.

Absolutely. And you? Yeah.

I mean, this is great because there is an opportunity to think about real solutions for today's problems, and I'd like to have that as the forefront of the conversation.

Absolutely.

I think for me, it's seeing last year's winner take advantage of the resources that Salesforce has available and understanding that AI is not a replacement of people. It's an enhancement of people. And you're trying to grow your business in any of these categories. Having somebody help you do that, having an agent help you do that, having agent centric commerce, I think is key to the future. Really key.

I love that. My new saying is agent force is the how, and I'm the wow. Because agent force can't replace me anyway. So I'm going to invite back up our contestants. If you could come up, Daniel Jomana. And let's see if we have our. Oh, we. Dun dun, dun dun. We've got our envelope. I'm going to ask you guys a question first. Okay. Here you can go on this side. Awesome. So what was the hardest question you received? I'm going to start right here with you, Jomana. We're not going to talk bad about Marcus because he's sitting right there.

Yeah.

So don't even say that. Sorry.

What was the question? The hardest.

What was the hardest question?

The hardest question was. I think I just didn't expect Dunya's question. I was expecting you going to ask me about Salesforce integrations. In my mind, I was preparing how to tell you the technical integration is going to happen.

Yes.

What's the. The technical challenge.

But yeah, you can't sass it. We learned that today.

Yeah, I loved that.

Yeah, I loved it.

So, Daniel, I'm gonna trademark that.

How did you feel about this competition you had up here? The ladies brought it.

They did, yeah. They're amazing.

Yeah.

One of the. One of the best things about this event is meeting both of them. I mean, there's the camaraderie and being an impact entrepreneur. You're not just having to run a business. You're having to deliver impact as well on top of that. And that's additional pressure.

Absolutely. Yeah. So iron sharpens iron. You've got some good gut up there.

So they're amazing. Yeah.

Awesome. And we got a bad mother up here. You a bad mama. So how did it feel?

You know, it felt really good, I think. Thank you for the question. Focus and Thread. To bring people along as you're going is really the intention of the world. We need for where we need to be. And it's just that reminder that it's time for me to build a team outside of the technical team and need help. And then, you know, as being, you know, one tough mother. You can do it all. You don't need anybody else while you do. So that was a reminder, but a good one.

Absolutely. Awesome. So I want to remind you, our AI change makers, Daniel from Gentian, Jumana from Voltaire. AI and Brenda from Tercer. Okay, get ready for my drum roll, please. All right.

All right.

Barenda Rissodi of tercer is our $200,000 winner. That is amazing. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And let's not forget that our runner ups are also getting $100,000 for your thing. And last but not least, thank you to our judges and our sponsor, Deloitte Digital. And thank you for your voting. Enjoy the rest of Dreamforce.

Awesome.

Look at this.

This is Publishers Clearinghouse all over again. Y' all old enough to remember that, I see. Thank you so much.

Congratulations.