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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 Boulder’s entrepreneurial network heard Shark-Tank-style pitches across two nights, one for innovations in biosciences and another for physical sciences and engineering.

VitriVax—CU Boulder spinout VitriVax has raised $17.25 million in Series B financing to accelerate development of its Stablevax™ 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 University of Colorado Boulder 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.

DARPA—CU Boulder startup Flari Tech was selected as a winner in DARPA’s Spark Tank competition, securing $400,000 in funding and direct engagement opportunities with program managers as it advances its next-generation technology.

ReviewerZero—A new partnership with Karger Publishers will accelerate their already strong research integrity strategy by giving the research integrity and publication ethics team access to the entire AI-powered suite by ReviewerZero, a CU Boulder startup founded by Daniel Acuña (CU Boulder Computer Science) in 2023.

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.