Tortora Brayda Institute and SKEMA team up; the launch of “CatalysAI” (U2I AI Hub) Nice, September 10th, 2025

Announcing the first project in the Institute’s (TBI) quest to accelerate and ease the path for responsible AI startup companies to achieve their optimal success.

The concept is to couple graduate business student capabilities with selected entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of their company’s development, when one is innovation rich and resource poor.

More precisely, the CatalysAI program will unite business graduate student talent, TBI institutional knowhows plus member-drawn ‘Expert Board’, and innovative AI startups to co-create market-ready, ethically grounded AI products & services

This TBI Expert Board of world class members in their related AI and business fields will be on hand to assist both the students/teachers and entrepreneurs by transferring their knowledge and real-life involvement thus adding to the quality and speed of completing the required tasks.

For the students, CatalysAI represents real-world problem-solving experience alongside industry executives, embedding rapid, mentored project cycles into coursework, turning classes into innovation studios hence boosting both startup readiness as well as future employability.

SKEMA, an international business school with three campuses in France, showcased 10 startup company projects that the faculty are assisting during this upcoming academic year in the MSc Digital Marketing & AI studies.

CatalysAI's First Project:

Rikx - Making Social Impact Count - empowering a game changing shift away from needing to lean on society’s support to adding to society’s progress.

Located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Rikx has created a community-based ecosystem that enables Social Entrepreneurs to understand the nature of their ability to help people and allows Social Investors to understand the ROI of their invested funds.

Their groundbreaking approach has been recognised both in the country and abroad uniquely delivering two major components, Social Impact measurability and Social Impact visibility. The methodology works as a marketplace for Social Impact, converting the impact that social entrepreneurs make into outcomes-based value. This tradable value allows entrepreneurs to innovate and scale and investors to make guaranteed investments. The platform lays the foundation for generating sustainable funding for innovative projects that tackle the complex challenge of, say, reducing unemployment and increasing social wellbeing in general.

 > € 1.000.000 invested | 25+ impact-projects started

> 500 people led to long term employment (35%)

> € 7.000.000 saved on governmental social support cost

A Skema select student group will be tasked to create a manageable EU-wide scaleup entry plan looking to establish the factors necessary to select the best-fit cities to launch the Rikx platform and methodology, designing an algorithm and pre-sales decision tool. Then, this tool will be tested, and a final playbook and scaling marketing plan will be delivered. The project will start in September 2025 and end in April 2026.

The Tortora Brayda Institute, an overarching think tank, inspires pragmatic projects in AI & Cyber Security that help to make the world a safer and better place.

#   Cyber Eagle Project #   AI for Good Innovation Factory #   CatalysAI Program