For Activate Fellows, 2021 Was the Year of Pilots, Products, and Partnerships
As anyone who pays the slightest attention to startups knows, venture capital is on a tear right now. And Activate Fellows are seizing the moment—particularly the uptick in climate tech investing.
While big funding announcements understandably attract a great deal of attention, funding alone won’t solve the urgent problems our remarkable fellows are working tirelessly to address. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up some of the most exciting products, partnerships, and pilots that our cohort companies have launched or announced in 2021.
“We give our fellows the opportunity to not just imagine what’s possible, but to demonstrate how their science can create real value for society,” says Activate CEO Ilan Gur. “It’s so inspiring to see their hard work pay off when they turn that corner from concept to product, whether in the form of a first prototype, purchase order, or partnership. Fundraising and valuations are important, but nothing makes us prouder than these wins, which show our fellows are not just promising the future but delivering it!”
Read on to learn more about fellows’ success across our eight industries. In each of these sectors, we’ve built a coalition of funders, commercial partners, industry advisers, and technology experts to support Activate Fellows and their startups. Join us in supporting them and growing their impact.
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Kevin Kung, Cohort 2018
TakacharWith Pacific Gas & Electric, Takachar is testing its reactor, which turns biomass into valuable carbon-negative fertilizer and other products, on slash (the woody debris byproduct of logging or storms) for wildfire mitigation in Northern California. Farmers in India already use the tech instead of burning crop waste, which won Takachar Prince William’s Earthshot Prize (clean air category). The startup is also one of 23 teams to win the $5M XPRIZE Carbon Removal Student Awards.
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Amanda Stiles, Cohort 2020
Trophic
Trophic came out of stealth this summer, debuting bacon made from protein extracted from red seaweed. It’s available for purchase now. Meanwhile, it’s also quietly building foundational technology to massively scale seaweed sourcing, working with partners to advance the first generation of offshore seaweed farming technology. -
Joshua McEnaney and Jay Schwalbe, Cohort 2020
NitricityNitricity had a breakout year for its technology that decarbonizes nitrogen fertilizer production, using only air, water, and renewable electricity. It grew and harvested its first pilot crops, proving that its approach supports yields that match control crops, with less fertilizer input. It also raised a $5 million Seed round, won the World Materials Forum Startup Challenge, and was featured in this micro-documentary.
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Elise Strobach and Kyle Wilke, Cohort 2020
AeroShield MaterialsAeroShield is developing lightweight, transparent inserts for windows that can increase insulation by 50 percent. It recently hit a major milestone toward commercializing super-insulating windows: producing samples for industry testing and certification. And through a DOE grant, the team is partnering with the University of Michigan to develop high-temperate solar thermal receivers for systems that generate heat for industrial uses. The hope is that AeroShield’s heat-trapping aerogels will make solar thermal energy systems competitive with conventional industrial heat, which relies on burning fossil fuels.
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Vince Romanin, Cohort 2017
GradientGradient generated industry buzz and major interest from consumers when it unveiled its beta window AC and heating unit. Gradient uses a heat pump and refrigerant with low greenhouse gas emissions, leading the charge to design systems that heat and cool homes without heating the planet.
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Etosha Cave and Kendra Kuhl, Cohort 2015
Twelve (formerly Opus 12)Twelve, which dubs its technology carbon transformation, raised $57 million in its Series A. It converts captured CO2 emissions into feedstocks to displace the use of fossil fuels in chemical manufacturing. In 2021 the startup announced a number of key partners, including the U.S. Air Force which supported Twelve in producing fossil-free jet fuel.
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Christina Boville, Cohort 2019
Aralez BioIn 2021, Aralez Bio sold over 70 different bespoke noncanonical amino acids—vital building blocks for many pharmaceutical, food, and agricultural products—to nearly a dozen customers. Aralez Bio’s patented biocatalytic platform uses a fraction of the energy and time that conventional methods require.
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Cheri Ackerman and Jared Kehe, Cohort 2020
Concerto BiosciencesThis year, Concerto Biosciences, which rebuilds microbial communities to restore health and reinvent our relationship with microbes, mapped the network of microbial interactions that drive skin microbiome behavior. The team uncovered an ensemble of microbes that keeps Staphylococcus aureus in a skin-friendly state and may serve as a safe, effective topical treatment for chronic skin conditions such as eczema.
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Raj Bhakta, Cohort 2019
CANVUSWhile living in San Francisco during his Activate Fellowship, Raj Bhakta realized he had a t-shirt problem. More than 50 graphic tees clogged his closet, forcing him to reckon with the tremendous resources—12,000 liters of water and 2.6kg of carbon dioxide emissions per—that went into each shirt. That led to CANVUS, and the world’s first erasable graphic t-shirt. To pre-order the beta CANVUS kit, email weare@canvus.info.
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Philip Taynton and Chris Kaffer, Cohort 2017
MallindaThermoset plastics are ubiquitous in durable goods, from cars to computers to applications, but they’ve never been recyclable until now. Mallinda recently debuted its Vitrimax platform, which offers resins that can be molded into products and later reheated and remolded for secondary uses. The chemistry is tunable to meet the specific thermomechanical requirements across industry segments. Mallinda has also developed a closed-loop system for the recovery and reuse of fiber and resin from fiber-reinforced composites. The patented recycling process is energy efficient, and both the recovered carbon fiber and the recovered resin can be reused to make fresh composite materials—a huge win for material circularity.
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Ryan Pearson and Matthew Ryan, Cohort 2019
Cypris MaterialsCypris Materials is developing a new generation of color without conventional pigments or dyes. Its architecturally unique polymers self-assemble into ordered nanostructures, tuned to reflect parts of the visible light spectrum and produce vibrant colors. Cypris’ coatings can replace persistent and toxic pigments and dyes while enabling new colors and color effects not possible through other means. Cypris recently forged a partnership with chemical giant BASF. The two companies are co-developing applications for Cyrpis’ paintable, structural color.
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Grayson Zulauf, Cohort 2020
Resonant LinkResonant Link’s wireless charging technology lays the foundation for powering large electric fleets. To this end, Resonant Link is working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Shell GameChanger accelerator to bring its wireless charging to Air Force fleet support equipment and mass-market electric fleets. But it also has traction in healthcare, where Resonant Link’s tech can eliminate drivelines and battery replacement surgeries for medical implants. Resonant is working with five medical device partners to ready the technology for devices like pacemakers, neurostimulators, ventricular assist devices, and beyond.
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Richard Wang, Cohort 2016
CubergThe emerging Swedish battery giant Northvolt acquired Cuberg in early 2021, marking the first exit for an Activate Fellow and driving Cuberg’s innovative battery toward faster deployment, advancing carbon-free electromobility—including electric aviation. In November, Northvolt unveiled the world’s first battery cell with 100 percent recycled nickel, manganese, and cobalt.
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Andrew Hsieh and Barry Van Tassell, Cohort 2016
FeasibleBatteries can’t power the clean energy transition if they don’t work as promised, but conventional electrical inspection methods are not up to the task. Feasible uses ultrasound and machine learning to rapidly and non-invasively deliver actionable information throughout the battery value chain. The startup recently added two new customers—a major European battery company’s advanced technology center and a top US solid state battery company—and will deploy its system with a developer of next-gen batteries early next year.
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Marcus Lehmann, Cohort 2015
CalWaveAfter years of innovative engineering and resilience testing, CalWave launched California’s first at-sea, fully submerged, long-duration wave energy pilot off the coast of San Diego. CalWave’s wave energy architecture overcomes fundamental challenges that have held the industry back for years.
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Tim Latimer and Jack Norbeck, Cohort 2018
Fervo EnergyAfter announcing a $28 million Series B, Fervo Energy said it and Google had signed the world’s first corporate agreement to develop a next-generation geothermal power project. Fervo will collect real-time data on the temperature, flow, and performance of geothermal resources, which Google will use to power its Nevada data centers via the local electrical grid.
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Sam Green and Ahmet S. Ozcan, Cohort 2021
Semiotic AICombining artificial intelligence and advanced cryptography, Semiotic AI brings secure and verifiable automation to Web3, the decentralized internet. Semiotic AI specializes in Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) to enable trustless computations and autonomous decision making in the blockchain, on which Web3 is built. Semiotic’s solutions will greatly enhance user experience and economic efficiency of decentralized market-based protocols as Web3 scales. Semiotic AI recently joined The Graph as a core developer. The Graph is the indexing and query layer of Web3—a role similar to Google’s on today’s internet. Funded through an eight-year, $60M grant from The Graph, Semiotic AI will improve the security, efficiency, and decentralization of the protocol that is foundational to Web3.
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Suraj Bramhavar and Jeff Chou, Cohort 2020
Sync ComputingSync Computing is running a pilot program with the language-learning service Duolingo, which is evaluating Sync's intelligent optimization engine to streamline its cloud computing operations for big data and machine learning workloads, cutting Duolingo’s costs by 50 percent. Sync also raised a $4.6M Seed round this summer.
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Cameron Hill, Cohort 2021
LintrinsICLintrinsIC, which is developing CMOS RF switches to support the transition to 5G wireless systems and sensor networks running on millimeter wave spectrum, has completed its prototype frequency mixer and is beginning to meet with potential partners and customers.
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Mael Flament, Cohort 2021
QunnectQunnect is building hardware to transform telecommunications infrastructure into scalable quantum networks. In November, the startup announced a world first: the sale of commercial-scale quantum memory. Brookhaven National Laboratory is the customer. Quantum memories are critical components for enabling future quantum-secure networks, as they support distributed entanglement communication protocols, and serve as core components in quantum repeaters.