The third annual USC Iovine and Young Academy Venture Showcase took place on Friday, April 18, 2025. 13 student-led ventures presented their startups to a panel of incredible judges: Academy co-founder Jimmy Iovine, Adrian Perica (Apple), Academy alum Jenean Glover (The Blackhouse Foundation), Hamet Watt (Share Ventures) and Yipeng Zhao (Embark Ventures). 

The jam packed, rapid fire morning featured companies pushing boundaries in AI, fintech, health tech, food science, and more. Not only was the 2025 Venture Showcase an incredible display of innovation and ideation at the Academy, it was also full of surprises — Dean Thanassis Rikakis announced partway through another prize of $10,000, bringing the total funding of the showcase to a transformational $75,000.

Academy co-founder Jimmy Iovine engaged in a special fireside chat with Venture Showcase host and Academy lecturer, Tina Sharkey to kick off the event. The candid discussion took us through Iovine’s journey from working with Academy Co-Founder Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, to founding Beats, to selling Beats to Apple, and to bringing the Academy to life as a creative launchpad for the next generation of changemakers.

From there, students pitched their ventures in real time for three different categories of prizes: GenAI and Society, Social Impact, and the Academy Innovation Prize. The standout winner of the day was Treffa, which took home the top GenAI and Society Prize of $25,000 for its hyper-personalized shopping feed that merges AI precision with social experience, transforming every shopping haul into a social event. Also in this category, Barscore AI earned $10,000 for its ability to use generative AI to instantly grade bar exam essays, pinpoint knowledge gaps, and deliver personalized drills to significantly boost pass rates. Additionally, HiredAI also received $10,000 for using generative AI to create role-specific interview questions, offering real-time coaching for responses, and building candidate confidence for success. The Social Impact Award and Genius Ventures’s “Most Backable Venture” Award, totalling $20,000 went to Veyra, which demystifies medical bills and disputes charges on behalf of patients, ensuring they never overpay. Lastly, the Academy Innovation Prize of $10,000 was awarded to BoldSnax, whose protein-rich snacks are redefining how we think about convenience, nutrition, and food entrepreneurship. 

Beyond these prize winners, several other ventures demonstrated incredible promise and groundbreaking ideas. These included Xydo, a GPU profiling engine that benchmarks AI workloads and recommends the fastest, most cost-efficient cloud configurations for optimal performance; Corresi, an AI solution that automates class action discovery, filing and compensation tracking, streamlining complex legal processes; Resonant, a voice AI that records, transcribes, and analyzes customer interviews without a single manual notes, providing priceless insights; Addlist Limited, a group chat marketplace where niche communities can buy, sell, and transact within a single, trusted thread; Penni, a one-click micropayment tool that unlocks any paywalled content for under a dollar, returning revenue back to publishers; and Stringer, a trust-first news platform that seamlessly blends frontline reporting, professional journalism, and live data for comprehensive news delivery. The showcase concluded with presentations from two Academy alumni, further highlighting the ongoing impact and sustained success of the Academyʻs graduates well beyond their time at USC; Buy Blvd, an affiliate network for in-store shopping that tracks real-time foot traffic and compensates creators for retail sales; and Prismia Enterprises, a no code-interface that unifies data, context, and agentic AI to automate complex workflows, making advanced AI accessible to a broader audience.

Many of these ventures not only secured crucial initial funding but also resulted in follow-up investor meetings, exemplifying the impact that Academy students make each and every day. The 2025 Venture Showcase served as an example of how students effectively transform bold ideas into tangible real-world solutions. Academy students do not wait to make an impact, they create, pitch it, and make it happen. 

The Next Generation of Founders is Here: Highlights from the 2025 Venture Showcase