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What drives someone to leave everything familiar behind and chase a global vision? When Genomelink co-founder Tomohiro “Tomo” Takano first landed in the Bay Area, he had no visa, no funding, and no traction — only a bold idea: to build a “DNA App Store” that would…

Using artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems, 1,200 developers vied for venture capital funding and other prizes over the weekend at a UC Berkeley hackathon. Participants competed Saturday and Sunday in the field of generative AI, which consumes data, learns from it, then produces text,…

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Press Release – AI and Climate Tech in the Spotlight at Upcoming Berkeley SkyDeck Demo Day

 Berkeley SkyDeck, the global hub for entrepreneurship and a leading accelerator, today confirmed its Demo Day for Batch 18 will take place October 1, 2024. Nineteen new companies will present to some of Silicon Valley’s most connected and experienced investors, with 18 of those companies…

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Press Release – Waypoint AI Raises $3.1M Pre-Seed Round; Deploys first AI Customer Support Engineer for industry leaders including ClickHouse and Kpler.

Backed by 42CAP and Dreamcraft Ventures, Waypoint AI is helping fast-growing software companies reclaim 15% of engineering capacity spent on customer-reported escalations. SILICON VALLEY, CA / ACCESS Newswire / June 26, 2025 / Waypoint AI, the AI customer support engineer that triages, investigates and resolves product defects, is…

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Press Release – Berkeley SkyDeck and Berkeley Space Center Join Forces for Air and Space Accelerator Track

BERKELEY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Berkeley SkyDeck, a global hub for entrepreneurship and a leading accelerator, today announced that it has relaunched its Air and Space Track in collaboration with the recently-announced Berkeley Space Center at NASA Research Park (“Berkeley Space Center”). The relaunched track takes advantage of renewed interest…

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Press Release – Berkeley SkyDeck Offers Hardware Startups Access to State-of-the-Art Design and Manufacturing Prototyping

BERKELEY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Berkeley SkyDeck, a global hub for entrepreneurship and a leading accelerator, today announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, UC Berkeley’s state-of-the-art interdisciplinary hub for learning and making at the intersection of design and…

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Press Release – Berkeley SkyDeck to Spotlight AI Innovation During Upcoming Demo Day

BERKELEY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Berkeley SkyDeck, the global hub for entrepreneurship and a leading accelerator, today confirmed its Demo Day for Batch 17 will take place April 10, 2024. Despite economic headwinds and fluctuations in the market, Berkeley SkyDeck startups have consistently raised capital, including more than…

Fireside Chats – Talks with Leading Founders
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Newsletter – October 5, 2022

SkyDeck hosted its largest Demo Day in Berkeley last week, with over 320 in-person guests and another 900 attendees online! Batch 14’s innovative founders presented their startups, which included solutions for endometriosis (an incredibly painful disease afflicting women), tools to accelerate integrated photonics design, a…

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Newsletter – September 21, 2022

SkyDeck’s Executive Director, Caroline Winnett, was interviewed for Crunchbase’s “Female Leaders Series,” in which Winnett reflects that the soft skills of “grit, determination, and discipline” that she gained in pursuit of her professional music career, also helped her succeed as a serial entrepreneur. For entrepreneurs just starting…

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Newsletter – August 17, 2022

With the season of applications in the air, startups that are gunning to join an accelerator and leverage the benefits of an insta-network often wonder what the process for selection actually looks like. In his latest blog, SkyDeck Fund’s Founding Partner, Chon Tang, takes readers…

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Newsletter – August 3, 2022

Applications for Berkeley SkyDeck’s Batch 15 Acceleration Program have just opened. Apply by Aug. 31st here! SkyDeck’s hybrid acceleration program allows global startup founders direct access to Silicon Valley through the collective resources of the entire UC Berkeley ecosystem. In her latest blog post, Caroline Winnett…

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Newsletter – July 20, 2022

Berkeley SkyDeck is hosting the Batch 14 Virtual Pitch Showcase on Thursday, August 4th! Select SkyDeck Europe, Pad-13, and IPP companies will be pitching, followed by one-minute feedback from each of the judges. Judges include Caroline Winnett (Executive Director, SkyDeck), David Riemer (author of Get Your…

Midas Series – Talks with Leading VCs
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Newsletter – July 6, 2022

Berkeley SkyDeck is well known for hosting the largest Demo Day in the Bay Area for the startups in its accelerator, but it also hosts each cohort a pitch competition featuring the startups in its incubator and Innovation Partner Program.  This time around, SkyDeck will…

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Newsletter – June 15, 2022

The SkyDeck Fund is excited to welcome two new members to its team, Riddhi Khanna and Capucine du Besset, as Platform Associates. Both will be focused on deal sourcing, further developing the platform for SkyDeck startups, and facilitating greater connectivity between the SkyDeck network, potential…

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Newsletter – June 1, 2022

Join TechCrunch’s climate-tech conference, TC Sessions: Climate, on June 14th at UC Berkeley. The single day event features some of today’s biggest names, such as Impossible Foods founder, Pat Brown, SOSV’s General Partner, Pae Wu, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Professor Bill Collins among many others….

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Newsletter – May 18, 2022

Last Wednesday, the campus leaders at UC Berkeley met with VCs at an exclusive UC Berkeley: Next Gen Entrepreneurship event to celebrate the launch of the new Bakar BioEnginuity Hub (BBH), a 40,000 sq ft  home for world class life science startups. The event featured three speakers,…

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Newsletter – May 4, 2022

Berkeley SkyDeck kicked-off its Batch 14 Program on Monday. Nearly 110 startups joined in person for orientation. The SkyDeck Penthouse was abuzz again for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.