Activate Updates: August 2026

August 26, 2026

The impact of hard tech knows no bounds. The Activate community is proving this across continents with sixteen of our fellow companies traveling to Seoul and Tokyo for deep-tech exchanges this month—and the announcement of our first-ever cohort of Activate Global Fellows right around the corner.

Our fellows are also activating breakthroughs across domains, from miniaturized lab equipment paired with AI for precision sensing, to first-of-its kind robotics software, and much more.

As we kick off our search for Cohort 2027, we’re looking for the next domains of breakthrough tech—like wildfire protection, flood and coastal resilience, and new frontiers in agtech. Know an innovator in one of these areas? Applications open on September 15! See our upcoming events below for opportunities to connect with us about the application process.

Lightfinder Is Bringing the Lab to the Field at the Speed of Light

Lightfinder (Diana Mojahed, Cohort 2025) could revolutionize real-time insights the same way wearables did—but instead of putting a sensor on every wrist, it aims to unlock precise optical sensing across industrial operations. On the heels of winning the 2026 Lam Capital Venture Competition, Mojahed is ready to “hire, accelerate, and move faster” with Lightfinder.

Reforge Robotics Is Making Industrial Robots Faster and More Precise—with Software

Nosa Edoimioya (Reforge Robotics, Cohort 2024) is tackling the problems that the robotics industry has quietly accepted: slow, shaky, and uncalibrated robots—and an untold number of hours spent trying to fine-tune them. Reforge’s first-of-a-kind software eliminates these costly pitfalls, with a vision for drastically expanding manufacturing capacity in the United States through automation.

The Next Industry-Defining Companies Will Be Built At The Intersection Of Software And Science

Each year, Activate reviews hundreds of proposals from scientists and engineers who believe their technology can change the world. This gives us a front-row seat to the industries of the future. Activate CEO Cyrus Wadia shared insights from this process in Forbes, including how breakthrough science influences industry and advice for business leaders who want to see today’s most promising science reach the market.

Activate Fellows Head to Seoul and Tokyo

Sixteen companies from the Activate community are headed to Asia for curated workshops connecting American hard-tech startups with investors, government leaders, and ecosystem builders in Korea and Japan. The program is organized by MTM Venture Partners and Northeastern University's Institute for NanoSystems Innovation, with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, and co-chaired by longtime Activate collaborator Michelle Kiang.

Get Ready to Meet Our First-Ever Activate Global Fellows

What happens when Activate’s proven model meets a brand-new ecosystem? Five Singapore-based ventures are about to become Activate's first cohort built outside U.S. borders: scientists working on the kind of problems most people have written off as unsolvable, now getting the support to prove otherwise. We can’t wait to announce our Cohort 2026 Activate Global Fellows and their groundbreaking innovations—coming soon in September.

In Our Ecosystem

Upcoming events, relevant opportunities, and what we're reading.

Upcoming Events

Fellow News

Inlyte Energy (Antonio Baclig, Cohort 2022) is shipping their first pilot modules and their sodium-based battery is featured in The Wall Street Journal article “Batteries made from salt are finally here.”
Newfound Materials (Matt McDermott, Cohort 2024) receives a sub-award on GAMBIT (Guided AI for Magnetic Boride/Carbide Intermetallic Technologies), a three-year, $2.8M project under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) MAGNITO program.
Vellex Computing (Palak Jain, Cohort 2023) is selected for both the Elev X! Ignite Venture Studio Program, hosted by NEC X Inc, and Taiwan's IAPS NYCU Accelerator.

Funding Wins

Soctera (Austin Hickman, Cohort 2022) raises a $4M seed funding round.
Teragen Energy (Ruofan Wang & Joshua Persky, Cohort 2026) raises an oversubscribed $6M pre-seed funding round to advance the company’s fuel cell technology from prototypes toward its first commercial pilot projects.
FAST Metals (Sumedh Gostu, Cohort 2025) raises $4.3M and lands its first commercial customer, validating its technology for recovering critical minerals from mining waste and is one of seven awardees of DOE’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub to strengthen domestic supply chains.
Aeroshield Materials (Elise Strobach, Cohort 2020), Daqus Energy (Harish Banda, Cohort 2024), Electrified Thermal Solutions (Joey Kabel & Dan Stack, Cohort 2022), florrent (Jose LaSalle, Cohort 2023), and Pascal (Jinyoung Seo & Adam Slavney, Cohort 2023) are among the first-ever awardees of Massachusetts’ new tax incentives for climate-tech businesses.
Wild Microbes (Tim Wannier, Cohort 2022), Orien Energy (Yajing Zhao, Cohort 2022), KIRA (Jon Bessette, Cohort 2025), EntoCellular (Sophie Letcher & Michael Saad, Cohort 2026), Flood Dynamics (Katya Boukin, Cohort 2026), Pascal (Jinyoung Seo & Adam Slavney, Cohort 2023), Robigo (Andee Wallace, Cohort 2022), rStream (Ian Goodine & Ethan Walko, Cohort 2020), and Allium Engineering (Steve Jepeal, Cohort 2023) are among 36 awardees splitting $9.5M in funding from MassCEC to advance new solutions for clean energy and climate challenges.
Still Bright (Jon Vardner, Cohort 2020) and SiTration (Brendan Smith, Cohort 2020) are selected by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation as two of nine projects sharing $162M to recover critical minerals from real industry sources.

Media Coverage

Garrett Boudinot (Vycarb, Cohort 2022) is featured on the podcast, A Climate Change with Matt Matern.
CUNY covers Jiye Son’s (Anew Material, Cohort 2024) journey launching her non-toxic nail polish line.
Victoria Coll Araoz (Semion, Cohort 2025) is featured in Forbes Argentina.
Yasmeen Alfaraj (NextSet Materials, Cohort 2025) joins the Composites Weekly podcast to discuss the future of thermoset recycling.
Ecotune (Ella Csuka, Cohort 2026) is featured by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in its August issue of Chemical Engineering Progress, highlighting the company’s technology platform for bio-based textiles.
Joel Edwards (Zanskar, Cohort 2020) joins American Conservation Coalition’s 2026 Top 50 Summit on a panel discussing “What will it take to power America’s next century?”
Dan Stack (Electrified Thermal Solutions, Cohort 2021) is profiled by Enlit in the article, “Meet the CEO who's tackling industrial heat decarbonisation.”
Following its $550M Series C raise last month, Antora Energy (David Bierman, Cohort 2017, Andrew Ponec & Justin Briggs, Cohort 2018) is featured in the Latitude Media article, “Do heat batteries make sense for data centers?”
Business For Good podcast, hosted by Paul Shapiro, sits down with Tim Latimer (Fervo Energy, Cohort 2018) to explore how a former oil and gas drilling engineer built one of the most celebrated clean energy companies in the country in under a decade.
rStream (Ian Goodine & Ethan Walko, Cohort 2020) shares what’s next for the company after its AI-powered robotics sorting technology debuts at Gillette Stadium. rStream is also selected as a recipient of the MassVentures START grant.
Cody Finke (Brimstone, Cohort 2019) joins the Political Climate podcast to discuss how Brimstone is scaling its Rock Refinery® co-production process that turns rock into cement, aluminum, steel, and more.

Partnerships

Tensora (Rob Moak, Cohort 2022) and Qunnect (Mael Flament, Cohort 2021) join together on the ABQ-Net project, the first open-access quantum network in the United States.
Coastal Assembly (Walter Zesk, Cohort 2026) becomes an associate member of Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI) as it works to restore coastlines in the Maldives.
BHP will partner with SiTration (Brendan Smith, Cohort 2020) to launch two copper recovery technology pilot projects at BHP's Copper Cities site in Arizona.
Noon Energy (Chris Graves, Cohort 2018) announced a joint agreement with Sabanci Renewables to utilize Noon’s technology to co-develop up to one gigawatt of ultra-long-duration energy storage projects to deliver 100% renewable, 24/7/365 energy for AI infrastructure.
Opera Bioscience (Julie Ming Liang, Cohort 2023) collaborates with Sunflower Therapeutics to cultivate a proprietary gram-negative bacterial strain engineered to express and secrete a reagent protein.

Awards

Intero Biosystems (Charlie Childs, Cohort 2025) has been selected for this year's TechCrunch 2026 Startup Battlefield, joining 200 promising early-stage startups from around the world.
Andon Bio (Laura White, Cohort 2026) is accepted into NVIDIA’s Inception program.
Prospect Growth (Wyatt Arnold, Cohort 2024) is selected to receive support from the HARVEST AgTech program and North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative faculty affiliates Mallory Choudoir and Alex Woodley.
Aanindeeta Banerjee (ReSource, Cohort 2020) is named to The Daily Digest’s Bioeconomy 500 for 2026, recognizing 500 individuals whose leadership is helping transform the bioeconomy from scientific and commercial possibility into projects, products, and industries.
Visolis (Deepak Dugar, Cohort 2015) is named among Biofuels Digest’s 100 Hottest Projects in the Advanced Bioeconomy for 2026.
Qunnect (Mael Flament, Cohort 2021) is awarded a research contract by DARPA’s Quantum Augmented Networks (QuANET) project to enhance the signal stability and resilience of entanglement-based telecom fiber networks.
Gilly (Bo Xu, Cohort 2026) is selected as a national semi-finalist in the 2027 American Farm Bureau Federation Ag Innovation Challenge.

Company Milestones

Found Industries (Peter Godart, Cohort 2022) hosts a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its Cambridge headquarters and Found Metals process development center.
Anthro Energy (David Mackinac, Cohort 2019) is joined by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to celebrate construction of its first commercial electrolyte manufacturing facility in Louisville.
Tandem PV (Colin Bailie & Chris Eberspacher, Cohort 2016) announces its acquisition of nexTC Corporation, an Oregon-based developer of advanced thin-film metal oxide coating processes, as well as its selection into the ARPA-E SCALEUP Ready program.
Zanskar’s (Joel Edwards & Carl Hoiland, Cohort 2020) AI-guided well revives a New Mexico geothermal plant to its full 15-megawatt capacity, as covered by GCN.
Pulsenics (Mariam Awara & Essam Elsahwi, Cohort 2022) launches a certification program for industrial-grade electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
VERDE Biomaterials (Danielle Pascoli, Cohort 2022) validates its process that transforms organic waste into advanced materials at 500x its original lab-scale throughput.
Biosimo (Iria Mostrou, Cohort 2025) is celebrating 55 kilo-tonnes per annum of bio-acetic acid volume, with an estimated value of $400M+ across the intended term.