CU Startup News
The Colorado BioScience Association has announced the companies selected to present at the Rocky Mountain Life Sciences Investor and Partnering Conference in Breckenridge on Sept. 12 and 13. Companies at the conference represent the future of life-saving health innovation from the Rocky Mountain West and include CU Boulder spinouts Think Bioscience, Arpeggio Biosciences, Aspero Medical, Darwin Biosciences, Illumen Therapeutics, and TissueForm.
Activate is a nonprofit organization that empowers scientists to transform their research into market-ready products and services through a two-year fellowship that provides funding, mentorship and access to a robust network of experts and resources. Three Cohort 2024 fellows join Activate from companies spun up at CU Boulder with Venture Partners at CU Boulder.
College of Arts and Sciences—The Infleqtion Graduate Fellowships, awarded to outstanding first-year physics graduate students at CU Boulder, support the development of future quantum scientists. These prestigious fellowships, established by the quantum tech company Infleqtion, a CU Boulder spinout, help attract top talent and provide significant financial aid, enabling students to focus on their research and career development in quantum technology.
TFX Capital—Mesa Quantum, a CU Boulder startup developing chip-scale quantum clocks and internal sensors for mass-market opportunities, secured a $75,000 cash grant.
BizWest—Infleqtion, a quantum information company that began as ColdQuanta at CU Boulder, raised about $10.8 million from investors this month, according to a pair of Form Ds filed recently with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The fundraiser came less than two months after the company hired Matthew Kinsella as its new CEO.
The Global Business Development division of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) announced that 34 Colorado companies and eight researchers have been awarded Proof of Concept and Early-Stage Capital and Retention grants through OEDIT’s Advanced Industries Accelerator Program. These grants help promote the growth and sustainability of advanced industries in Colorado by driving innovation, commercialization and public-private partnerships that move this vital aspect of Colorado’s economy forward in communities across the state.
Fierce Biotech—OnKure Therapeutics, a CU Boulder spinout, has merged with Reneo Pharmaceuticals, jumping onto Wall Street with $120 million and a lead breast cancer treatment challenging the likes of Eli Lilly, Relay and Scorpion. The merged biotech will retain OnKure's name and is set to trade under the ticker “OKUR.”
BizWest—Think Bioscience, a CU Boulder spinout, has raised a $26 million seed round—including a recently completed $6 million expansion of the initial fundraise—to develop small-molecule therapeutics that target “undruggable” proteins.
BizWest—Leaders of Boulder's and the university's life-sciences community who gathered at the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder for a BizWest CEO Roundtable said they saw Pfizer’s recent departure as a lucrative opportunity.
2023 was another tremendous year for innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Campus researchers and inventors created a strong crop of 162 breakthrough technologies this past year. These spanned the breadth of CU Boulder’s research expertise, with innovations in climate tech, biotechnology, quantum science, optics and aerospace, to name a few. CU Boulder's commercialization arm, Venture Partners at CU Boulder, supports a groundbreaking pipeline translating research into real-world impact, as highlighted in their 2023 Annual Report.