Hivemind Capital, a deep-tech investment firm, has launched Darkmatter Lab in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. The new initiative aims to help academic researchers turn advanced scientific work into commercial products before forming a full company.
Darkmatter Lab will be a core part of Hivemind’s upcoming venture fund. Legal support comes from Gunderson Dettmer and Goodwin Procter, while Google Cloud provides cloud infrastructure resources.
Funding and support details
Each selected project receives at least $1 million in combined support. This includes direct research funding from Hivemind Capital, $350,000 in cloud computing credits from Google’s startup program, legal assistance for immigration, intellectual property, and company formation, plus operational support through Berkeley SkyDeck.
Initial focus areas
The first group of projects will target artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. Interest areas include AI infrastructure, autonomous agent systems, cybersecurity, compute optimization, cryptography, and decentralized networks.
Hivemind says the goal is to create a pathway for promising research to move from academic environments into practical applications. The firm wants to give researchers access to capital, infrastructure, and business resources much earlier than traditional startup funding models allow.
