Activate Welcomes New Board Members and Celebrates its Fellows $3.5B Funding Milestone
Today we announced a new funding milestone: Activate Fellows, current and alumni, have secured a cumulative $3.5B in funding for their companies, and over $2B of that has been confirmed in the last year alone. The nearly 200 companies founded with Activate’s support are developing a wide range of hard-tech solutions including climate tech, advanced manufacturing and robotics, new uses of chemistry and materials, reimagined food and agriculture, space innovations, and more.
Building on this momentum, Activate is also strengthening its board of directors through the addition of two new veterans of systemic innovation, Dr. Alex Dehgan and Nitesh Sharan. Dehgan, the CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, brings deep experience both nationally and internationally, including through his work as the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he created USAID’s DARPA for Development, the Global Development Lab and the Grand Challenges for Development Organization. Dehgan’s experience spans a variety of high-impact, science-oriented projects, and he brings strong orientation in what hard tech can do to solve society’s hardest challenges.
Sharan, Chief Financial Officer at SoundHound AI, brings extensive finance and operations expertise. He has led finance teams at rapidly scaling startup environments as well as at large global organizations such as Nike, and he brings powerful guidance on how Activate can scale its impact while preserving the mission of the organization. Dehgan and Sharan join the board alongside another recently added board member, Dr. Andrew Hsieh, who is co-founder and CEO of Liminal Insights. Hsieh, an Activate Fellow alum from Cohort 2016, became a board member this summer and represents the voices of fellows and alumni.
“As we cross this incredible $3.5B milestone, it’s amazing to see the flywheel of Activate’s model in action,” said Cyrus Wadia, CEO of Activate. “Every day, the Activate community continues to grow stronger as we accelerate the pace of scientific innovation and commercialization. With that, I’m excited to welcome Alex and Nitesh to the board. I’ve known each of them for a long time and I’ve seen the positive differences they make in organizations. They are both visionaries who are deeply mission-oriented, and I’m excited for the knowledge they bring to Activate.”
“I am honored to join Activate’s board, championing the visionary scientists and engineers who turn groundbreaking research into sustainable businesses,” said Sharan. “By nurturing these catalysts of change, we transform great science into real-world solutions for our planet’s most pressing climate challenges.”
"Science and technology, particularly in hard tech, have the potential to change the reality of what is possible when it comes to solving society’s toughest challenges,” said Dehgan. “Activate has built a powerful platform for fostering these important innovations. I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences—from scrappy startups to the corridors of DC—and helping expand the impact that fellows are making.”
Funding secured this year by Activate Fellows has come from a variety of public and private sources. That includes Twelve (Etosha Cave and Kendra Kuhl, Cohort 2015, Cyclotron Road), which is developing sustainable aviation fuel and secured $645M in funding through a mix of project equity, venture funding, and credit facilities; Zanskar (Joel Edwards and Carl Hoiland, Cohort 2020, Cyclotron Road), which raised $30M from Obvious Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and others to further its geothermal exploration technology and expand access to clean and affordable power sources; and Pascal (Jinyoung Seo and Adam Slavney, Cohort 2023), which raised $8M in seed funding from Khosla Ventures, Blindspot Ventures, and Engine Ventures, for its new high-efficiency heat pumps.
In addition, government agencies have awarded significant funding to Activate Fellow-led companies such as: HOPO Therapeutics (Julian Rees, Cohort 2023, Cyclotron Road), which recently announced a $226M contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to advance R&D of its oral therapy to treat heavy metal poisoning; Electrified Thermal Solutions (Joey Kabel & Dan Stack, Cohort 2021), which was selected for over $40M in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop its zero-carbon, on-demand renewable heat solution; and Antora Energy (David Bierman, Cohort 2017, Justin Briggs and Andrew Ponec, Cohort 2018, Cyclotron Road), which was chosen by ARPA-E for a $14.5M award to accelerate the launch of its heat and power thermal battery product.
