Startups

Alumnus Jeremy Bilotti co-founded Rarify, a design furniture retail company, reports Lauren Mowery for Forbes. “Rarify uses the history of design to tell a story, educate our audience about the importance of notable designers, and push toward the future, bringing to light noteworthy manufacturers and designers that aren’t known or recognized to the degree that they deserve,” explains Rarify co-founder David Rosenwasser. Alumnus Jeremy Bilotti co-founded Rarify, a design furniture retail company, reports Lauren Mowery for Forbes. “Rarify uses the history of design to tell a story, educate our audience about the importance of notable designers, and push toward the future, bringing to light noteworthy manufacturers and designers that aren’t known or recognized to the degree that they deserve,” explains Rarify co-founder David Rosenwasser.

Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung spotlights Elise Strobach PhD ’20 - co-founder and CEO of AeroShield Materials, a company developing super-insulating windows. Strobach is a recipient of funding from the MassVentures fund for deep-tech startups with a focus on underserved founders or those based in underserved regions. “We want to do cool things that have big impact,” said Strobach. “The minute I first visited Massachusetts, I just really felt that, ‘Wow, this is a place where that can happen.' "

MIT spinout Gaia A is developing a forest management building tool aimed at providing foresters with the resources to make data-driven decisions, reports Haje Jan Kamps and Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The company is currently using lidar and computer vision tech to gather data but is ultimately building a data platform to tackle some of the big questions in forestry,” writes Kamps and Heater.

Quaise Energy, an MIT spinout, is developing a millimeter wave drill to “vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at scale to satisfy human energy consumption without the need for fossil fuels,” reports Tim Newcomb for Popular Mechanics.

Kevin Kusch ’17 co-founded Notemeal, an nutrition app used by athletes at the professional and college level, reports Tim Casey for Forbes. “Notemeal’s first clients used the app to build meal plans for players and track their nutrition information. After Covid-19 hit, the NFL did not allow players to gather for meals, so Notemeal developed a feature where players could order directly through the app, see nutrition information such as carbohydrates, proteins and calories and pick up the food prepared at team kitchens to take home,” writes Casey.

Cognito Therapeutics, founded by Prof. Ed Boyden and Prof. Li-Huei Tsai, has secured a large-scale trial to test a new device aimed at treating Alzheimer’s disease, reports Sarah McBride for Bloomberg.

Forbes reporter Ed Garsten spotlights Sampriti Bhattacharyya PhD ’17, founder of Navier, and her work in developing the N30, the first commercially available electric hydrofoiling boat in the United States. Bhattacharyya, a former aerospace engineer, “turned to waterborne transportation during her doctorate work at MIT where she worked on underwater drones and had a key realization,” writes Garsten.

Jake Becraft PhD ’19 and former postdoctoral associate Tasuku Kitada co-founded Strand Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing mRNA therapies for cancer, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. They created “a way to activate mRNA in the presence of particular microRNAs – a much more useful application for therapies,” writes Cross. 

WCVB reporter Karen Holmes Ward spotlights Joshua Reed-Diawuoh MBA ’20, founder of Gria Food Co., a U.S.-based food company that provides locally sourced snacks from Africa to customers around the world. Ward highlights Diawuoh’s work with Commonwealth Kitchen, a commercial kitchen that aims to uplift local businesses.

Forbes reporter John Cumbers spotlights Jasmina Aganovic ’09 for her work in combining biotechnology with skincare. "Biotechnology enables us to expand the ingredient palette of the beauty industry to molecules in all parts of the tree of life, ethically and sustainably," says Aganovic.

Alumna Geeta Sankappanavar founded Akira Impact, an investment firm that directs capital to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals, reports Cheryl Robinson for Forbes. “The firm invests in companies that support gender equality, clean water and sanitation, clean energy and responsible consumption and production,” writes Robinson.

Graduate student Kevin Frans co-founded OpenAI, a for-profit research lab that aims to provide free public access to artificial intelligence systems, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Our mission is to put AI is the hands of everyone,” says Frans.

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 correspondent Scott Kirsner explores the growth of quantum computing from the field's roots “at a 1981 meeting in Dedham, at MIT’s Endicott House conference center.” Bharath Kannan PhD ’22, co-founder and CEO of Atlantic Quantum, notes that if researchers could develop a computer that was natively quantum mechanical, "it would be game-changing for a lot of industries.”

CNN reporter Isabelle Gerretsen spotlights Lisa Dyson PhD ’04 and her startup Air Protein, which is developing a new technique to make protein “using just microbes, water, renewable energy and elements found in the air.” Air Protein has created “a new type of agriculture and a new way of growing food that doesn’t require arable land,” Dyson says.