The Engine Ventures' CEO and Managing partner Katie Rae talks to Forbes’ Alex Knapp about its recent round of fundraising for investments in startups focused on sustainability, health and infrastructure. Rae also sees opportunities in quantum computing and other new hardware, saying “power and climate and compute all go together.”
Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of the Engine Ventures, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman about The Engine Ventures’ third investment fund, which remains focused on “helping early-stage startups develop and commercialize ‘tough tech,’ which can include anything from fusion power generators to cement made without fossil fuels.” Rae notes: “You see this dynamism not just for climate, but for all things manufacturing, whether it’s biotech, whether it’s AI chips, it is about as an exciting moment as you could get for what we do.”
Boston Globe reporter Janelle Nanos visits The Engine Accelerator to learn more about their focus on providing tough tech startups with lab spaces and equipment. “We created this sort of ecosystem with support resources,” says Knight of the inspiration for the Engine Accelerator. “Where we are today was born out of those early needs, interviewing all these scientists and technologists, that were willing to work in a shared faculty but had different needs than existed.”
TechCrunch reporter Ron Miller highlights MIT’s role as a driving force behind the Greater Boston area’s success as a hub for startups. Emily Knight, president of The Engine Accelerator, notes that universities are breeding grounds for new ideas. “There is a lot of research and a lot of infant innovation being translated into companies coming out of these [Greater Boston area] universities,” Knight explains.
The Engine Accelerator, a spinoff from The Engine, is a new unit designed to help early startups “get off the ground with a deeper level of support, including office and lab space,” reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Real estate is actually a big need of a company that is doing tough tech, but they need different types of real estate,” says Emily Knight, president of the Engine Accelerator.
Tristan Swedish SM '17, PhD '22 co-founded Ubicept – a company that “uses a radically different kind of digital camera that can shoot razor-sharp images under the most challenging conditions, and can even see around corners,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Ubicept abandons the chip technology called CMOS, or complementary metal-oxide semiconductors, that’s used in nearly all digital cameras, in favor of a newer kind of sensor,” explains Bray.
Fortune has named Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, as one of the top 13 seed stage, climate tech VCs to watch, reports Lucy Brewster for Fortune. “Rae tops venture firm The Engine, which beyond being a fund, is an investing arm that spun out of MIT,” explains Brewster. “Yet Rae invests in an array of companies and sources founders from beyond just university walls.”
Katie Rae, chief executive officer and managing partner of The Engine, speaks with Bloomberg reporter Akshat Rathi about how climate-tech startups are often well served by having scientists and engineers serve as leaders, in particular when surrounded by established business talent. “In the earliest phases of these things, you cannot just divorce the science from the scientist or divorce the engineering from the engineer,” says Rae.
Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights Boston as a potential leader in climate technology for their “incubator spaces like Greentown Labs in Somerville and The Engine in Cambridge.”
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights how The Engine has “backed a number of promising climate-tech startups” and has “helped attract many other investors to climate tech.” Additionally “three-quarters of startups backed by The Engine had a founder or chief executive from an underrepresented minority group, and 44 percent had a woman in one of those roles,” Pressman notes. “From our point of view, it is unacceptable not to believe that people of very diverse backgrounds should be the next founders,” says Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine.
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater recounts his visit to the Cambridge area to visit and explore a number of startups. Heater discusses his visit to The Engine; his time with Perch, a startup founded by MIT student athletes that is building a “professional strength training detection system used by several professional sports teams;” and his meeting with LeafLabs, an engineering services company founded by MIT graduates.
Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights the work of Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, on his roundup of some of the key figures in Boston’s tech network. The Engine is “for startups focused on ‘tough tech,’ technology that can often take years to perfect and build a business around,” writes Kirsner.
Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, an entity created by MIT to help support tough tech startups, speaks with Akshat Rathi of Bloomberg about the importance of investing in climate technology. “We have fundamental risks that, if we don’t tackle with real deep science and engineering, that will take us a full step forward, or two steps forward, we’re in trouble,” says Rae.
Bloomberg News spotlights how President L. Rafael Reif, who “oversaw a revitalization of MIT’s campus and its continued integration with Kendall Square” has announced he will step down at the end of 2022. “Reif’s emphases as provost and president included the shift to more online learning, and innovation in ‘tough tech,’ including the creation of 'The Engine,' an incubator supporting companies to solve the world’s greatest challenges, from fusion energy to new medical devices.”
Bloomberg reporter Janet Wu speaks with Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine. Rae explains that The Engine backs “those types of founders that are on a mission to do something that will be truly impactful in a positive way to the planet."