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In an ongoing effort to bridge a pervasive investment gap in innovation funding, the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ has awarded pre-seed funding to Illumen Therapeutics, developing cancer treatments based on discoveries from startup co-founder Roy Parker’s lab at Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder.

The Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ actively incubates and supports nonprofit and for-profit ventures with broad societal impact, from far-reaching educational and wellness tools to vaccine accessibility and water security.

Launched in 2018, Destination Startup® connects investors with groundbreaking startups built on novel discoveries from leading national labs and universities in the Intermountain West. Participating startups must be actively raising and are selected through a competitive review process and robust pitch preparation.

Renewable And Sustainable Energy Institute—A startup team led by RASEI Fellow Oana Luca, called Agami Zero, has just secured seed funding after winning the 2025 Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØLab Venture Challenge. Their winning idea? A new way to produce hydrogen fuel more efficiently, a key mechanism for decarbonizing our energy economy.

BizWest—Arpeggio Biosciences, a University of Colorado startup that works in the development of pharmaceuticals, has raised about two-thirds of what it expects to collect in its latest investment offering.

OEDIT—The Global Business Development division of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade announced that five companies based on innovations from the University of Colorado and one Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØresearcher have been awarded Proof of Concept and Early-Stage Capital and Retention grants through OEDIT’s Advanced Industries Accelerator Program.

Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Today—A team of Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ researchers is making reliable, inexpensive and easy-to-deploy sensors that monitor soil in real time and have formed a new startup, Tierra Metrics.

Eleven teams of University of Colorado faculty, researchers and graduate student innovators competed for a combined $755,000 in startup funding grants in this year’s Lab Venture Challenge (LVC). Judges from CU's entrepreneurial network heard Shark-Tank-style pitches across two nights, one for innovations in biosciences and another for physical sciences and engineering.

VitriVax—Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ spinout VitriVax has raised $17.25 million in Series B financing to accelerate development of its Stablevaxâ„¢ platform, which eliminates the need for cold storage in vaccines. The funding will support preclinical and clinical advancement of single-dose, thermostable vaccines aimed at improving global immunization access.

Business Wire—VitriVax Inc., a Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ vaccine formulation technology spinout, today announced it has been awarded a two-year, $9.9 million grant from the Gates Foundation. The funding will support the scale-up of VitriVax’s Atomic Layering Thermostable Antigen and Adjuvant (ALTA®) technology, enabling Phase 1-ready GMP manufacturing and advancing the platform to prepare for Phase 1 clinical trials.