Numat is a Chicago-based advanced-materials company and the first to commercialize metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at industrial scale. Its molecularly engineered, programmable 'sponges' capture, store, and separate hazardous chemicals for semiconductor, defense, and energy customers, reducing the impact of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment.
Axoft is a Cambridge, Massachusetts neurotechnology company building implantable brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) out of Fleuron, a proprietary material it claims is up to 10,000x softer than the polyimide used in conventional brain implants. By making electronics roughly as soft as brain tissue, Axoft aims to keep thousands of sensors in stable contact with single neurons for years instead of months - reducing scarring and signal loss - to diagnose and eventually treat disorders of consciousness, paralysis, and other neurological conditions. A Harvard spinout founded in 2021, it raised an oversubscribed $55M Series A in April 2026 and has run first-in-human studies in 11+ patients worldwide.
Excelsior Sciences is a New York City biotech building 'machine-native chemistry' - a way to make small molecules that machines can execute and AI can learn from. Its proprietary smart bloccs platform turns drug synthesis into a modular, automation-friendly, iterative process, closing the loop between AI-driven discovery and real-world manufacturing. Founded in 2024 and spun out of Deerfield Management, the company raised $95M in late 2025 to scale the platform and reshore U.S. drug discovery and production.
Paul Le Floch is the co-founder and CEO of Axoft, a Cambridge neurotechnology company building brain implants out of a material so soft it behaves like brain tissue. A Harvard-trained materials scientist and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he bet that the way to read the brain better was not to borrow chips from the semiconductor industry but to invent a new material from scratch. The result, Fleuron, is up to thousands of times softer than conventional probes yet can carry over 1,000 sensors. Axoft has now implanted its device in 11 patients and raised a $55M Series A to push toward FDA trials.
Albert Invent builds an AI-native operating system for chemists and materials scientists, unifying electronic lab notebooks, LIMS, regulatory compliance and predictive AI into one cloud platform that aims to compress decades-long R&D cycles into weeks.
ARRIS Composites is a Berkeley-based advanced manufacturing company that invented Additive Molding, a patented process for mass-producing continuous-fiber thermoplastic composite parts. The technology lets brands replace metal and plastic with lighter, stronger, more sustainable parts - and do it at consumer-electronics volumes.
Felix Ejeckam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Akash Systems, a San Francisco-based deep-tech company that invented GaN-on-Diamond semiconductor technology - a breakthrough that enables dramatically better thermal management for both satellite communications and AI data center servers. A serial entrepreneur with two prior exits, Ejeckam holds 80+ patents and 100+ scientific publications, was named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and led Akash to a $68.2M CHIPS Act preliminary agreement and the world's first diamond-cooled NVIDIA GPU server deployment.
Kathleen Alexander is co-founder and CEO of Savor, a San Jose-based food-tech startup that makes butter, palm oil, and cocoa butter alternatives from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen - no animals, no plants, no farmland. Backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Synthesis Capital with $33 million raised, Savor commercially launched its carbon-synthesized butter in March 2025 and was recognized in TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. Alexander holds a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering from MIT and is a 2013 Hertz Fellow who grew up in Corvallis, Oregon - famously starting college at 16, dropping out, attending community college, and ultimately earning her doctorate at MIT.
Riley Reese is the CEO and co-founder of ARRIS Composites, a Berkeley-based advanced manufacturing company that invented Additive Molding - a patented process combining 3D printing and compression molding to produce continuous carbon-fiber composite parts at commercial scale. A materials scientist who once built biodegradable heart tissue scaffolds at UC Berkeley, Reese pivoted that same obsession with fiber architecture into a $157M-funded company whose technology now shows up in Brooks running shoes, Skydio drones, and bicycle spokes. He previously co-founded AREVO, worked at medical device giant Stryker, and led additive manufacturing programs in Amsterdam at TNO - before returning to Berkeley to tackle what he calls 'a new manufacturing category.'
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.
Valeska Schroeder, Ph.D., is CEO and Chairman of the Board at Cerapedics Inc., the Colorado-based orthobiologics company behind i-FACTOR and PearlMatrix - two of only three FDA PMA-approved bone grafts on the U.S. spine market. A materials scientist by training (BS, MS, PhD from UC Berkeley), she spent the first part of her career in medtech product development before transitioning to venture investing at KCK MedTech, where she led deals and sat on boards of companies including Sight Sciences, Aerin Medical, Intuity Medical, and Lungpacer. She joined Cerapedics' board in 2018, deepened her involvement in 2021, and took the helm as CEO in November 2022, steering the company through PearlMatrix's landmark FDA approval in June 2025 - making Cerapedics the only company with two PMA-approved spinal biologics.