Featured Startup Investment Opportunities

Columbia startups continue to demonstrate that university-born innovation can translate into high-growth companies with real market impact. In the past year, several Columbia-founded companies have reached major milestones, including:

Below is our latest list of investment opportunities emerging from Columbia’s research labs. The 10 featured startups span therapeutics, medical devices, materials innovations, and AI. As a reminder, you can also browse Columbia’s 1,000+ available technologies by keyword or faculty member here.

If any of these opportunities are of interest, please email [email protected] for an introduction to the team.

Therapeutics

  • Proofread Therapeutics: Proofread Therapeutics is a life sciences company developing treatments to improve the viability of embryos to establish a pregnancy. The company’s research programs are based on groundbreaking discoveries in Dr. Dietrich Egli’s lab at Columbia University, which has been at the forefront of reproductive medicine for over a decade. Proofread’s lead program uses novel technology to improve IVF outcomes by protecting the early embryo from DNA damage associated with chromosomal changes and pregnancy failure and preventing transmission of mutations. This approach has potential for use in all IVF procedures, a market worth over $10B. In the future, the company plans to further explore the Egli lab’s pioneering research to reduce the burden of severe genetic disease. Proofread is seeking a lead investor to close a $5M pre-seed funding round that will allow the company to begin discussions with the FDA, advance validation studies in human and mammalian models, strengthen its intellectual property, and establish clinical partnerships.
     
  • Ariva Bio: Geographic atrophy (GA), the advanced form of dry AMD, is a leading cause of irreversible central vision loss in older adults, with roughly 1M US and 5M global patients. Ariva Bio is developing a once-daily oral therapy for GA, targeting an estimated $12B market. The company was co-founded by Dr. Konstantin Petrukhin, professor of ophthalmology at Columbia University, who pioneered oral RBP4 modulation - the mechanism behind Belite Bio's tinlarebant, now under FDA Priority Review for Stargardt disease and in Phase 3 for GA. Ariva Bio is developing a single oral molecule that both lowers serum RBP4 and stabilizes transthyretin (TTR) tetramers, a profile designed for chronic use by GA patients who tend to be older and thus more susceptible to age-related TTR cardiomyopathy. Ariva's lead TTR ligand reduced serum RBP4 by 81% and retinal bisretinoids by 98% in mice, with in vitro TTR stabilization comparable to acoramidis (published in J. Med. Chem). Led by Interim CEO Israel (Izzy) Halpert (former Citi Investment Banking MD, CFO and entrepreneur), Ariva Bio is raising a $12.5M seed round to complete IND-enabling studies and file an IND.
     
  • DeckTx: Using discoveries made by Dr. Richard Deckelbaum, DeckTx’s lead asset, THDG3, is a promising potential 'fire extinguisher' for major brain shocks, like traumatic brain injury or strokes. To get to the market fast, this injectable emulsion is being tested on hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), the leading cause of neurological damage in children worldwide. THDG3 is designed to reach the brain fast after oxygen deprivation and complement therapeutic hypothermia, the current standard of care. DeckTx’s head-to-head 'gold standard' piglet study against cooling was just published in the prestigious Journal of Cerebral Bloodflow. In this severe HIE model, THDG3 improved or normalized all assessed measures of brain tissue injury, metabolism and oxidative stress, demonstrating superiority over standard of care. The data also support THDG3's use alongside cooling, and in animal testing one dose reversed up to 87% of brain damage if administered within a 6-hour treatment window. DeckTx is advancing traumatic brain injury as a second indication and discussing two pharma collaborations - one for joint experimental development and one evaluating THDG3 as a delivery vehicle for another molecule. DeckTx also formed a recent partnership with DVLP Medicines to use AI to drive R&D speed and producitvity. Deck is led by Zeid Barakat- former co-founder of Aura Bio (2021 IPO) and Flyberry Capital (acquired by a PE firm). DeckTx is raising $20M in two milestone-based tranches to advance THDG3 from preclinical development through initial first-in-human data (Phase2a).
     
  • Integral Discovery: Integral Discovery is a proprietary technology for making peptide and small protein therapeutics with backbone analogs recombinantly, spun out of the laboratories of Drs. Virginia Cornish (Columbia), Scott Snyder (UChicago), and Krishna Kumar (Tufts) alongside Dr. Charles Cantor (Serial Entrepreneur, Board). The anti-obesity drug market has catalyzed interest in peptides as therapeutics, but at the same time illustrated the need to incorporate backbone analogs to achieve the necessary pharmacokinetics properties. The technology is based on the Genetic Code Expansion technology, but unlike existing companies in this area (which establish commercial interest in this technology even for just the incorporation of side chain analogs), Integral Discovery has developed robust technology for incorporating backbone analogs into peptides in a masked form and then unmasking them chemically post-translationally. Integral Discovery is a platform technology, but the company has started off with applications in dermatology and eye disease. Integral Discovery seeks $6M in seed funding to advance its first two therapeutic targets to validation in mice. 

Medical Devices 

  • Blend Health Technologies: Blend is developing a cardiovascular intelligence system for cuffless continuous blood pressure monitoring and broader hemodynamic insights. Blend is designed to deliver clinical-grade performance in a simple wearable form factor. The system uses wearable sensors placed on the upper arm near the brachial artery to capture cardiovascular signals at multiple tissue depths. This unique approach is designed to provide continuous blood pressure without an inflatable cuff and extract additional cardiovascular information from the same sensors. The underlying technology is exclusively licensed from Columbia University and was developed by Dr. Samuel K. Sia, who continues to support Blend as Scientific Chair. Blend has developed the integrated wearable device, software and analytics platform and is generating clinical data toward FDA clearance. The initial focus is blood pressure monitoring and hypertension, with expansion into broader cardiovascular applications. Blend is raising a $10M Series A to complete clinical validation and FDA clearance, product refinement, scale manufacturing and support commercialization.

Materials Innovations 

  • Tessellate 2D: Tessellate 2D is developing tools to manufacture two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors with unprecedented quality. 2D semiconductors enable faster and more efficient computation. Industry experts forecast that 2D semiconductors will replace silicon in next-generation computer chips. Tessellate grows many-layer bulk crystals with record purity. Then, a unique metal-stamp technology enables access to each individual layer within those crystals. Tessellate produces large area 2D semiconductors with 1000x greater purity than standard methods. The initial discoveries were made in the labs of Columbia's Drs. Xiaoyang Zhu, James Hone, and Katayun Barmak. Tessellate is raising a $4M seed round to deliver a prototype tool to a semiconductor industry customer.
     
  • Redox Metals:Redox Metals is a Columbia University spinout developing low-cost, electrified technologies for critical mineral processing. Founded out of Dr. Alan West's lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering, the company is commercializing an electrochemical platform built on recyclable redox chemistry. Co-founder Tongwei Xu is an Activate Fellow and leads commercialization. Redox Metals is initially focused on nickel and cobalt. Its patented technology uses an electrochemically regenerated cerium redox couple to extract target metals from low-grade and unconventional feedstocks at room temperature and refine it into high-purity products for energy and defense applications. By replacing centralized, capital-intensive smelting with modular electrochemical systems, Redox Metals aims to enable lower-cost, cleaner, higher-yield, and more readily deployable domestic mineral processing. The platform can also be extended to other critical minerals, including molybdenum, zinc, and silver. Redox Metals is planning to raise a $2M pre-seed round to scale its technology from laboratory demonstration to a 10 kg/day integrated system and prepare for pilot-scale testing with industry partners.
     
  • Greenore: Greenore's proprietary carbon mineralization technology converts low-value waste (steel slag, mine tailings, red mud, RCA) and CO2 into high-performing co-products. Its first-of-a-kind 200,000 ton/year slag facility produces carbon-negative precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) and a low-carbon supplementary cementitious material (SCM), feedstocks for mature markets including paper, plastics, paint, and adhesives. Greenore closes the loop in industrial supply chains and adds directly into its partners’ bottom lines. With the most mature technology in the field, Greenore is priming for international expansion. It has signed 1) a contingent contract with a top cement producer that just received a €20+ million EU Modernization Fund grant to build a Greenore facility, and 2) an MOU with a global industrial waste manager for a North American commercial-scale facility. Spun out of Columbia Engineering in 2016, the technology was co-invented by co-founders Dr. Ah-Hyung (Alissa) Park, now Dean of UCLA Engineering, and CEO Dr. Xiaozhou (Sean) Zhou. Greenore is seeking a $2M round to grow its US operating team.

AI

  • KAV Labs (Keep Agents Verified): KAV Labs is building the assurance infrastructure for enterprise AI agents. Today, most enterprise agents are limited to low-risk tasks with human oversight. The bottleneck isn’t capability; it’s trust. Before agents can run operational workflows—moving money, modifying infrastructure, or approving transactions—enterprises need assurance that every critical action is authorized, secure, and compliant. KAV derives verifiable constraints and user intentions from business documents, permissions, security policies, and regulatory requirements, defining what agents may, must, and must never do. It combines formal verification with runtime enforcement to verify actions before and during execution, providing machine-checkable guarantees, evidence of compliance, and a complete audit trail. These constraints also improve agent reliability by narrowing the action space for complex, cross-system workflows. KAV's vision: make autonomous agents safe enough to run the enterprise, with the governance, accountability, and risk control enterprises require. KAV Labs is led by Columbia's Dr. Baishakhi Ray (Co-Founder & CEO), In Keun Kim (Co-Founder & CTO), and Dr. Suman Jana (Chief Scientist). KAV Labs is raising a $5M seed round.
     
  • Tailored Surveys: Standard surveys ask every respondent the same questions, written in advance by experts. As a result, they can miss concerns, issues, or ideas that experts overlook. Crowdsourced Adaptive Surveys (CSAS), developed by Dr. Yamil R. Velez at Columbia and published in Political Analysis, addresses this limitation. Respondents describe the issues they care about in their own words, AI converts those raw responses into survey items, and an optimization algorithm decides which items to present to later respondents. The questionnaire evolves as responses arrive and increasingly reflects the priorities respondents raise. The approach applies to public opinion research, market research, and program evaluation. Tailored Surveys holds a license to CSAS from Columbia. Tailored Surveys is raising a $1M pre-seed round to recruit a founding CEO and a first engineer, fund IP protection, and cover compute costs.

 

Previously featured startup investment opportunities: 

Spring 2026 

Fall 2025