Where are the Berkeley startups?

The East Bay is a world-class leader when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship. Often referred to as the “Academy Awards of the East Bay,” the East Bay Innovation Awards is the premier program of its kind that celebrates and honors the extraordinary companies and organizations that contribute to the East Bay’s legacy of innovation. For over a decade, the annual awards ceremony has showcased outstanding organizations that embrace innovation in their manufacturing, products, services, design, and information.

Congrats to Berkeley companies Bayer, Twelve, Ambi Robotics, Climax Foods, and Bakar Labs for getting selected as finalists for a 2024 East Bay Innovation Award!

Purchase tickets to join the celebration.

The Bioneers Conference, one of the pre-eminent eco-themed gatherings in the nation, now in its 35th year, will bring ~3000 attendees to the East Bay when it returns to Berkeley in 2024 with a wide array of presentations, panel discussions, performances, films, networking events, etc. Keynote speakers will include: world-renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard; biologist Merlin Sheldrake, author of the bestselling Entangled Life; Electronic Frontier Foundation Executive Director Cindy Cohn, and many more.

Register to attend with discount code Berkeley20 for 20% off the listed ticket price.

Survey Closes: TODAY, January 23 at 5:00pm

The future of the Bay Area is uncertain, but you can help paint a clearer picture of the future of work and workers' transit needs by completing the Bay Area Council Return to Office Survey. One of the region’s only key recovery metrics, this survey is critical to tracking commute trends and designing services that meet commuters’ needs.

Take the survey today! 

Applications due: February 14

Are you a visionary startup founder ready to elevate your game?  Berkeley SkyDeck is a game-changing accelerator where you can immerse your startup in a stellar network of industry execs, top-notch advisors, and top-tier Silicon Valley VCs, all while supported by UC Berkeley’s great network of alumni, faculty, and advisors.

Startups accepted to the highly competitive Cohort program receive $200K in funding, pitch at Demo Day and gain access to $750K worth of invaluable resources.

Register for an info session this month and apply for Batch 18 by February 14th.

Deadline: February 15, 2024

The Energy & Bioscience Institute (EBI) is looking for companies to host summer interns! The EBI Internship program is designed to provide hands-on training and mentorship for students and recent graduates seeking real-world experience in the energy and biosciences field. While EBI will provide a stipend, it also expects companies to pay the interns.

Email EBI if your company can host an intern and wants to benefit from fresh perspectives, new ideas, and potential future employees!

Find a range of options for meeting new people, brainstorming with coworkers, and working more productively in 2024. From desks at coworking spaces, to private offices, to state-of-the art wet labs, Berkeley has a range of options for entrepreneurs, freelancers and companies at all stages of growth. Examples include spec lab/office suites with room to grow at Foundry 31, theLab Berkeley, and Berkeley Commons, shared labs and office spaces at Bonneville Labs, Cell Valley Labs, and Bakar Labs, or dedicated desks, meeting rooms, office rentals, or on-demand workspaces at coworking facilities like WeWork, CoWorking with Wisdom, The Office: Berkeley or Workstation West Berkeley, among others.

Deadline: April 12, 2024, 2pm PDT

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the Solutions for Lasting, Viable Energy Infrastructure Technologies (SOLVE IT) Prize is now accepting submissions.   

The SOLVE IT Prize will support communities as they identify and work to implement innovative clean energy solutions in a way that works best to address their unique needs and challenges. By empowering communities to solve their energy-related challenges, the SOLVE IT Prize looks to promote the commercialization of promising energy technologies in a way that will lead to an equitable and just energy transition.  

Solve the challenge here. 

Carmot Therapeutics Inc., a Berkeley-based clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to developing life-changing therapeutics for people living with metabolic diseases including obesity and diabetes, announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement for Roche to acquire Carmot at a purchase price of $2.7 billion upfront and the potential for $400 million in milestone payments.

Read more in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. 

For the second time, Pivot Bio, Inc., a sustainable agriculture company headquartered in Berkeley, was named to TIME’s annual 'Best Inventions' list, which features 200 extraordinary innovations changing our lives.

Pivot Bio is recognized for the company’s introduction of PROVEN® 40 OS, which enables corn farmers to seamlessly plant their seeds with up to 25% of the crop’s nitrogen needs already in place. By introducing its products as a seed coating, Pivot Bio is making microbial nitrogen broadly accessible and has unlocked new markets around the world.

Read more in Pivot Bio's press release.

KoBold Metals, a Berkeley startup, is one of the several firms applying artificial intelligence to the process of finding minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel to be used for electric batteries, wiring, and motors. 

Read more in The Economist.  

Rigetti Computing, Inc., a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing based in West Berkeley, announced that it was awarded a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project as part of the Imagining Practical Applications for a Quantum Tomorrow (IMPAQT) program to advance the state-of-the-art in quantum algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems. 

Read more in Rigetti's press release. 

Three well-known women in biotech have started a new venture capital firm focused on the intersection of biotech and tech.

Risa Stack, Widya Mulyasasmita and Rowan Chapman launched BEVC Management LLC in Berkeley in 2023, but the group has kept a low profile. It has not filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission around raising a particular fund, but it has built a heavy-hitting group of advisers and is working with UC Berkeley startup leaders.

Read more in Bizwomen.

The House Fund, a pre-seed and early stage venture capital fund focused on UC Berkeley startups, has successfully closed its third tranche, Fund III, at $115 million. This latest fund will support AI startups affiliated with UC Berkeley, including alumni, faculty, and current students at various levels of education.

Read more on Robots.Net.

UC Berkeley aims to build a major new “innovation zone” in Downtown Berkeley with two large laboratory buildings for research & development, including one for genome engineering. The two proposed buildings, on a space comprising almost 500,000 square feet, would house researchers, faculty, and students from multiple disciplines.

Read more in Berkeleyside.