Draft:Activate (foundation)

Activate is a non-profit that provides fellowships and associated services to scientists and engineers with the goal of bringing their research projects to the commercial market.

Founded in 2015, the organization has supported 145 early-stage companies that have collectively raised nearly $1.4 billion in follow-on funding as of June 2023. As of December 2022, Activate's fellows had collectively filed over 320 patent applications (with 48 granted), and created more than 1,200 U.S. jobs.

Starting October 16, 2023, Cyrus Wadia, a veteran of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Amazon, and Nike, assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer.

The Activate Fellowship
Activate's two-year fellowship provides a yearly living stipend to individuals and $100K in research funding for each fellow company, with no equity taken by the organization. Activate provides fellows with hands-on support, mentorship, and entrepreneurial training and education.

Activate operates across five communities: Berkeley, Boston, New York, Houston, and Anywhere (with fellows utilizing research facilities across the United States), and new cohorts of fellows are selected each year.

History
Founded in 2015 by former ARPA-E director Ilan Gur, Activate's entrepreneurial fellowship model originated in Berkeley, California at Cyclotron Road, a division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and founding Activate partner.

In 2019, the program rebranded as the “Activate Fellowship,” and in the following year expanded to Boston in partnership with MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

In 2020, Ilan Gur, Cheryl Martin, and Fernando Gómez-Baquero wrote a memo advocating for a national fellowship for entrepreneurial scientists and engineers, further elaborating the programmatic vision.

In 2021, Activate signed a contract with NYSERDA to expand to New York in partnership with Columbia University. In 2021, Activate also launched the virtual community Activate Anywhere to serve science entrepreneurs across the United States.

In 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act included $125M for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish “a fellowship program to provide scientists with entrepreneurial training." As a result, in September 2022, the National Science Foundation announced a new $20 million investment in entrepreneurial fellowships through a multi-year cooperative agreement with Activate.

In 2023, Activate expanded to Houston to support science entrepreneurs in the energy sector. Also in 2023, Activate was named a semi-finalist in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Direct Air Capture Pre-Commercial EPIC Prize and awarded $100K for its role in recruiting diverse direct air capture founders and supporting new direct air capture startups.