Activate Updates: May 2025

Activate Updates

May 29

We frequently discuss the success of our numerous federal partnerships, including those with the NSF, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and CHIPS for America. In addition to advancing science at the national level, Activate’s many state-level partnerships are advancing innovation all around the country. At the ClimaTech conference in Boston, we celebrated how local ties in Massachusetts are driving national impact.

On the other side of the country, this year’s LEEP Demo Day took place in Berkeley and featured many Activate leaders and fellows who celebrated the progress that’s being made in hard tech innovation, from new neural interfaces to aerogels to refrigerant-free air conditioning.

We also spotlight some thought leadership from a couple of Fellows. Ioana Knopf of Arrakis Materials just launched AskBetterQuestions.tech, where she's sharing tips with other founders about understanding the customer and finding product-market fit.

Also check out our Q&A with Dan Stack of Electrified Thermal Solutions and read how his fellowship experience shaped how he thinks about influencing hard tech innovation.

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Here’s a deeper dive into all of this month’s news.

Future‑Forward Science Presented at LEEP Demo Day

At this year’s LEEP Demo Day, Activate Fellows who are on the verge of wrapping up their 2-year Fellowship at Cyclotron Road pitched the latest updates from their companies. It’s incredible to see how far they’ve come in just two years, both in building their technologies and how they’ve grown as business leaders. Throughout the day, it was clear how innovation is key to turning deep science into real-world impact. Our blog post about the event shares highlights about the on-stage conversations and the fellows who presented.

Showcasing the Next Generation of Climate Tech at SF Climate Week

At SF Climate Week, 30+ innovators showcased hands-on demos of their tech at our “Live From the Future: Deep-Tech Investor Expo,” which was hosted by Activate and joined by our partners at Breakthrough Energy Fellows and The Engine Ventures.

Guest Blog by Fellow Ioana Knopf: Asking Better Questions

An article by Activate Fellow Ioana Knopf explores what she calls something “tougher than tech”: identifying the right problems to solve. Drawing from her own founder experience, she offers sharp insights on understanding customer needs and finding product-market fit. In the spirit of helping other science founders, Ioana launched a website, AskBetterQuestions.tech, where she shares guidance on key questions she has encountered on her own entrepreneurial journey.

Trailblazing in Thermal Energy Storage

By reimagining how we power industry, the world’s largest source of emissions, Activate Fellows are enabling decarbonization in some of the hardest-to-abate sectors. Electrified Thermal Solutions (Dan Stack & Joey Kabel, Cohort 2021) is a leader in thermal energy storage, aiming to replace every fossil fuel heat source with an electrical source using its breakthrough firebrick technology. We sat down with ETS co-founder and CEO Dan Stack to learn about the journey from the lab to industry leadership.

In Our Ecosystem

Upcoming events, relevant opportunities, and what we're reading.

Fellow News

SirenOpt (Jared O’Leary, Cohort 2023) shipped its first third-generation PlasmaSens system for international deployment in Taiwan.
Finishing & Coating featured PlumaJet (Michael Grzenda, Cohort 2024) and its electric-field-driven spray coating technology in its May issue
Quorum Bio (Sudharsan Dwaraknath, Cohort 2022) initiated its first field trials in apple disease prevention.
Robigo (Andee Wallace, Cohort 2022) initiated its largest field trial demonstrations in soybean and lettuce disease prevention.
United Airlines announced a deal with Twelve (Etosha Cave & Kendra Kuhl, Cohort 2015), covered by the Wall Street Journal.
PolySpectra's (Raymond Weitekamp, Cohort 2015) first composite photopolymer resin was featured in VoxelMatters' article on new resins that are expanding 3D printing possibilities.
Inlyte (Antonio Baclig, Cohort 2021) announced the first utility-scale demo of its iron-sodium battery in partnership with Southern Company and in collaboration with EPRI.
Cody Finke (Brimstone, Cohort 2019) was quoted in Heatmap on what new tariffs will mean for hard-to-decarbonize sectors and in the Financial Times article ‘Business school teaching case study: who pays for cutting carbon out of making cement?’
Chris Graves (Noon Energy, Cohort 2019) was interviewed by Renewables Now about Noon’s full-scale demonstrations of its Ultra-long-duration energy storage battery technology.
Tyfast (Haodong Liu & GJ la O', Cohort 2022) and US Vanadium launched a joint effort to industrially scale a new class of metal oxide anode for heavy-duty vehicle batteries.
Sublime (Leah Ellis, Cohort 2020) was mentioned in a Bloomberg article on Microsoft’s new deal for green cement.’
Fervo (Jack Norbeck & Tim Latimer, Cohort 2018) was featured in Latitude Media’s ‘What Fervo’s approach says about financing first-of-a-kind energy projects.’
Found Energy (Peter Godart, Cohort 2022) won the ClimaTech 2025 Global Innovation Challenge with its “bold solution with the potential to cut 1.5B tons of CO₂e by 2050.”
Electrified Thermal Solutions (Cohort 2021), Osmoses (Cohort 2021), and Eva (Cohort 2023) were named among awardees from MassVentures START Grant program.