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The University of Colorado is a star in the constellation of the U.S. innovation ecosystem. At Venture Partners at CU Boulder, we are proud to contribute to a tightly bonded community of entrepreneurs, companies, investors and government partners that make Colorado an innovation leader. By translating breakthrough research into new businesses, CU creates economic opportunities while addressing many of the world’s greatest challenges. In the past year, CU Boulder has burned especially bright through Venture Partners’ record-setting performance.

First Look at Fiscal Year 2023-24:

In fiscal year 2024, Venture Partners helped to launch 35 new startup companies out of CU Boulder’s research labs. This is a great leap above CU Boulder’s previous record of 20, set in 2021, and places it among the very best university campuses globally. One of the 35 startups is Mana Battery. Built around the research of Chunmei Ban (CU Boulder Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering), Mana is producing sodium-based batteries as an alternative to the scarcity, performance and safety drawbacks of lithium batteries that enable clean energy solutions. Mana joins several battery companies to spin out from CU Boulder in the past 10 years, which have collectively created hundreds of jobs and attracted over $1 billion in investment to the state.

Our dramatic rise in startup production is no accident. It is the fruition of a multi-year strategy to make CU Boulder the premier university campus in which to launch a new company. The team at Venture Partners has built a suite of resources to inspire, mentor, train and fund aspiring founders among faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The surging startup numbers are built on the record productivity of these founder support programs, including lean startup training through the NSF I-Corps^TM Hub: West Region (105 teams trained this year), proof of concept grants through the Lab Venture Challenge (12 awardees totaling $1.5 million), Ascent Deep Tech Startup Creator (15 graduating companies) and the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator, our newest program, which paired community entrepreneurs with CU Boulder innovations to form 10 new companies.  

We look forward to sharing our full upcoming annual report, which will include further details of how Venture Partners lights up the innovation constellation.

Bryn Rees

Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation; Managing Director of Venture Partners at CU Boulder