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Disney is always looking for new technology to invest in, especially in storytelling. Recently, the company’s Disney Accelerator program held a demo day where startups they’re fostering presented their projects to company executives and more

“This year, we’re focusing on a lot of things that we can use in post-production time for creating our content,” said David Min with The Walt Disney Company.

After 15 weeks of guidance, these companies are ready to showcase their work.

“We like to kind of put together technology with storytelling to kind of create new experiences and better experiences to tell that story,” said Min.

Audioshake develops technology that can separate audio into individual tracks to boost dialogue, remove background noise and more.

“So, for example, in this interview that you and I are talking right now, if there’s a lot of crowd noise in the background, it might actually make it hard for your viewers to hear it, right? We can split that audio and make it so that you’re just hearing my voice and your voice,” said Jessica Powell of AudioShake.

StatusPro makes a virtual reality game called NFL Pro Era, which lets you play as your favorite quarterback. It’s $30 and available on Meta Quest and PlayStation VR.

“So it’s a fully immersive experience. You get the sights, the sounds, the excitement of what it’s like to be in an NFL,” said Troy Jones of StatusPro.

Nuro is building smarter self-driving technology. They’re already delivering products and pizza in San Francisco and Houston, but now they’re adding a layer of AI that helps cars reason like a human driver.

“Perception and behavior models that use real world data to keep learning new behaviors and are able to account for vehicles and pedestrians and animals and react accordingly,” explained Sarayu Lozano of Nuro.

Promethean AI is building a virtual assistant for artists that allows them to build 3D worlds faster than ever.

“Here’s the mountains in your library. Here’s the forest. Put them together at a spaceship and you have your scene, you know, from a movie that you’re building,” said Andrew Maximov.

You never know where this technology could end up—whether in the editing room, a theme park attraction, our living room or somewhere else.