CU Startup News
The University of Colorado Boulder reached a historic milestone, launching 35 new companies based on university intellectual property during fiscal year 2024, more than any other U.S. campus that year. In addition to holding the No. 1 spot for that year, the achievement also places CU Boulder No. 2 for the most startups launched in a single year by a U.S. campus.
Business Wire—Cascade Bio, a CU Boulder spinout enabling enzyme-based processes, has secured $6 million to accelerate the shift from petrochemicals to biomanufacturing. The funding includes $3.2 million in non-dilutive funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). With this investment, Cascade will expand delivery of its breakthrough biocatalysts.
Infleqtion, a CU Boulder spinout and global leader in quantum technology, announced a $1.8 billion business combination with Churchill Capital Corp X and will trade under the ticker “INFQ.” Now Colorado’s tenth unicorn, Infleqtion continues to drive the state’s growing quantum hub by commercializing breakthroughs across computing, sensing, security and energy markets.
Infleqtion’s star continues to rise as Colorado’s quantum hub grows. The company of firsts, spun out of CU Boulder as ColdQuanta, seems to be everywhere these days, including outer space, while commercializing pioneering research to address needs across several critical markets including positioning, navigating and timing, global communication security and efficiency, resilient energy distribution, and accelerated quantum computing.
CUbit Quantum Initiative—Entrepreneur Eva Yao discusses how the Nobel Prize-winning frequency comb technology from the lab of Jun Ye (Physics, JILA, NIST) can rapidly detect very small molecules in human breath, potentially enabling early disease detection and improved patient outcomes.
LASP—Space Dust Research & Technologies, a CU Boulder startup co-founded by LASP researchers Xu Wang and Mihaly Horanyi, has been awarded one of ten NASA TechLeap Prizes in the Space Technology Payload Challenge for their Electron Beam Dust Mitigation (EBDM) system. It was selected from a record-breaking field of more than 200 applicants to receive up to $500,000 and the opportunity to launch on a test flight next summer.
Nine years ago, a group of researchers from the CU Boulder Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering launched a pioneering medical device startup Point Designs to commercialize prosthetic technology. Today, those same researchers are announcing the company has entered an agreement of impending acquisition with Hanger, Inc.
The Conversation—Over the past several months, universities have lost more than $11 billion in funding. Research into cancer, farming solutions and climate resiliency are just a few of the many projects nationally that have seen cuts. The Conversation asked Massimo Ruzzene, senior vice chancellor for research and innovation at CU Boulder, to explain how these cuts and freezes are impacting the university and Colorado’s local economy.
Activate—Three CU Boulder-based innovators and their startups have joined Activate's Cohort 2025. Elliot Strand and Payton Goodrich, co-founders of PAGE Technologies, and Nadia Jorgenson, co-founder of OsmoPure Technologies.
Venture Partners capped off its third Ascent Deep Tech Accelerator with the 2025 Ascent Deep Tech Community Showcase, where research-based startup teams pitched innovations to an audience of investors, entrepreneurs and fellow researchers. The showcase featured ventures developing breakthrough solutions in health, energy, aerospace and more.