CU Startup News
Electrek—Capital investment into Forge Nano, a CU Boulder spinout, now exceeds $100 million; GM joins Volkswagen, LG, Hanwha, and Mitsui Kinzoku as shareholders.
Colorado Public Radio—The pace of innovation and spin-off companies at the four-campus system is accelerating, particularly in the fields of health and bioscience, quantum, cybersecurity, aerospace, climate innovation, the outdoors and the food and beverage industries. The university system has 80 innovation and business accelerator programs that give patent legal, and financial support to budding entrepreneurs.
Forge Nano Inc.—Forge Battery, the commercial lithium-ion battery production subsidiary of Forge Nano, a CU Boulder spinout, announced it was selected for award negotiations of up to $100 million in non-dilutive funding by the Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) to expand its North Carolina lithium-ion battery gigafactory production capacity to 3-gigawatt hours per year (GWh/year).
Yahoo Finance—OnKure has announced the successful completion of its merger with Reneo Pharmaceuticals, with the combined entity set to operate under the OnKure Therapeutics name.
Fourteen teams of University of Colorado entrepreneurs, faculty researchers and graduate student innovators will compete for a combined $1.25 million in startup funding grants in this year’s Lab Venture Challenge (LVC) Showcases. Judges from Venture Partners at CU Boulder’s entrepreneurial network will hear Shark Tank-style pitches across two nights, one for innovations in biosciences and another for physical sciences and engineering.
Leeds School of Business—CU Boulder alum Nick Manuzak is one of the 2024 Entrepreneurs in Residence in the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator, leading an innovative venture focused on integrating carbon-storing hempcrete into modern construction to revolutionize sustainable building practices.
BizWest—Infleqtion, a quantum information company that began at CU Boulder as Coldquanta, recently received a $1.15 million Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop software for quantum computing.
Photonics Online—A new variant of liquid crystal is at the core of CU Boulder startup Polaris Electro-Opstics' technology. Designed as a seamless drop-in enhancer of silicon photonic chips, Polaris's modulator technology paves the way for the next generation of optical interconnects critical to the future of data center disaggregation.
The Colorado Sun—Thornton-based Solid Power, a CU Boulder spinout, has a $50 million federal grant to ramp up development of the solid-state EV batteries it considers the technology of the near-future in automobiles, putting the company closer to its goal of developing a mass production facility in the eastern U.S. or Korea.
Semiconductor Today—Sivers Semiconductors and Ayar Labs, a CU Boulder spinout, will host a joint live demonstration showcasing the 16-wavelength distributed feedback (DFB) laser array integrated into the Ayar Labs SuperNova multi-wavelength light source.