Andrew Bradford (left) and Jared Wise will represent the University of New Orleans at the 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition.

Two University of New Orleans students will participate in the Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s largest and richest student start-up competition. Forty-two teams from five countries will compete next month for more than $1 million in cash, investments and prizes.

Mechanical engineering junior Andrew Bradford and recent computer science master’s graduate Jared Wise make up two-thirds of a combined University of New Orleans and Ole Miss team called “Automatic AI.” Ole Miss student Julien Bourgeois is the third member of the team. Simply being accepted as a finalist in the competition is a huge honor. Only 42 teams were accepted out of 540 applicants.

The Rice Business Plan Competition will take place April 10-11 in Houston. Over the course of the competition, student-led startups, including Automatic AI, will pitch their ventures to investors, mentors and industry leaders. The competition format includes multiple rounds of pitching in different company groups; Automatic AI will compete in the digital enterprise group. The team’s UNO advisers are Dong-Jun (DJ) Min, associate professor and chair of marketing, and Shafin Khan, vice president of external affairs and innovation at The Beach at UNO.

Automatic AI is a sports tech company that uses Apple Watch technology to track sport specific motions. The company’s flagship product is Automatic: Basketball Trainer, a basketball workout tracker offering statistics on accuracy, shot trajectory, stamina and consistency. In about a year, the product has more than 35,000 installs and users have taken over one million total shots. The team plans to expand the basketball product to high school and college basketball teams and develop more sports training apps for sports including baseball and golf.

Automatic AI was also accepted as a finalist in the Arkansas Governor’s Cup, which will take place on April 17 in Little Rock. Automatic AI will be one of six teams participating in the high growth track competition. The company's Privateer roots run deep. It was also the winner of UNO's inaugural StartupUNO competition in 2022.