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Nick Talken
Nick Talken is the Co-Founder and CEO of Albert Invent, an Oakland-based AI platform that is transforming how chemists and materials scientists do research and development. A chemical engineer by training who learned to code, Talken spent years inside Henkel's global R&D organization before spinning out Albert Invent in 2022 with a team of co-founders who built the product from within. The company's platform - used by over 3,000 scientists across 142+ labs in 30+ countries at companies like Kenvue, Henkel, and Chemours - has raised over $52 million from top-tier investors including Coatue, Index Ventures, TCV, and J.P. Morgan Private Capital.
Chris Emerson
Chris Emerson, PhD, is the Founder, Chief Scientist, and CEO of LEVEL, California's #1 cannabis tablet brand. A US Navy veteran and Chinese interpreter turned small-molecule chemist, he abandoned a Stanford postdoc in 2012 to spend four months living in a tent on a Mendocino cannabis farm - and emerged with a founding thesis that would reshape how the industry thinks about getting high. Instead of chasing THC percentages, he built LEVEL around effects-driven cannabinoid formulations using precise ratios of acidic, neutral, and degradative compounds the plant alone can't deliver. Two US patents, multiple peer-reviewed publications, and an IRB-approved clinical trial later, LEVEL is the top-selling cannabis tablet brand in California, now operating in seven states.
Sasha Novakovich
Sasha Novakovich is the Founder and CEO of Alchemy Cloud, a San Francisco-based enterprise SaaS company bringing AI-powered lab management and product development software to the specialty chemicals and applied sciences industries. Born in Russia and raised in Los Angeles after immigrating at age five, she built her first company in 1999, sold it to CNET, spent years as an angel investor backing female-led startups, and then spotted a glaring gap - brilliant chemists stuck doing brilliantly manual work with spreadsheets. Alchemy is her answer: a connected lab platform that merges ELN, LIMS, DOE, and AI into one system to help companies like those in beauty, food, building materials, and industrial chemicals bring better products to market faster.