Cornell Tech has announced the arrival of 11 new ventures to its campus this September as part of the Runway Startups Program, operated by the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. The incoming cohort is tackling a diverse set of global challenges—from agricultural robotics and energy systems to fertility care, trade compliance, and AI safety—underscoring the program’s commitment to translating advanced research into real-world impact.
Since its inception, the Runway program has launched over 120 companies, collectively valued at more than $1 billion, and has been responsible for creating over 700 jobs in New York City. This year’s founders bring deep technical expertise and entrepreneurial ambition, continuing the program’s legacy of fostering scalable, research-driven innovation.
The Runway Startup Postdoc Program supports Ph.D. graduates from top universities and research institutions around the world. Participants receive a comprehensive two-year package valued at up to $325,000, which includes salary, research funding, workspace, IP support, and mentorship from Cornell Tech faculty and industry experts in fields such as health tech, security, computer vision, and connective media.
In parallel, the Spinouts Program supports teams of Cornell Tech master’s graduates, each awarded $100,000 through the Studio program to launch their ventures. This year, runner-up Reforma received in-kind support including office space and access to Runway mentorship, reflecting the program’s inclusive approach to nurturing promising ideas.
By combining academic rigor with entrepreneurial guidance, the Runway Startups Program continues to serve as a launchpad for breakthrough technologies and mission-driven founders. The latest cohort is poised to make meaningful contributions across industries, reinforcing Cornell Tech’s role as a hub for innovation and impact.
Runway Startup Postdocs
— L2 Labs (Andrew Bell) — Combines advanced AI and machine learning research with implementation, developing technologies in areas like task-specific language modeling, data mapping, and information reliability for enterprise clients.
— Enhansys (Andrea Fusco and Domenico Gioffrè) — A unified digital platform integrating energy professionals’ software tools with an intelligent co-pilot, using advanced optimization, energy modeling, and machine learning to streamline and enhance energy system design and operation.
— [Venture in formation] (Ming-Chang Chiu) — A blockchain-based auditing protocol and platform that gives autonomous agents from different parties a secure, decentralized network to interact, enabling verifiable transactions and trust across systems.
— Budbreak Innovations (Ertai Liu) — Develops and runs vineyard management robots, starting with scouting for tasks like disease detection and yield estimation, with a long-term vision of achieving fully autonomous vineyard operations from perception to actuation.
— Néa Fertility (Olivia Mendivil Ramos) — A health platform for reproductive medicine that ingests multimodal patient data — omics, clinical history, and lifestyle — to train foundational AI models tailored to reproductive biology and personalize fertility care.
— RemNeuro (Nikolay Lukyanchikov) — A hardware-and-software solution that modernizes and standardizes neurological exams, combining a compact chair-based system with workflow-integrated software to automate data collection and track objective patient progress over time.
— Moon Wave (Yiran Zhao) — The creator of CalmingBeats, a wearable software that detects user anxiety via mobile sensing and delivers subtle, biofeedback-based wrist vibrations to promote calm, leveraging neuromodulation research developed at Cornell Tech.
Spinouts
— SAIL (Chansam Kim, Olivia Mei, William J. Reid, Salik Tehami, Ali Raza) — An AI-based compliance platform that transforms global trade into a strategic advantage, automating classification, tariff optimization, and regulatory risk mitigation for heavy industry importers, and turning weeks of manual work into actionable decisions in seconds.
— gymii.ai (Selina Li, Zach Zhong, Alex Taic) — An AI-based nutrition tracking app that turns meal logging into a fast, social, and delightful experience by using instant photo/video analysis to provide calorie and nutrient breakdowns, integrated goals tracking, and community sharing.
— CreditQuant AI (Adam Liu) — Automating commercial credit underwriting by parsing financials, calculating risk ratios, and drafting credit memos so lenders can close deals in minutes, not hours.
— Reforma (Courtney Clapper) — Uses computer vision AI for delivering personalized exercise form feedback that improves technique, reduces injury risk, and maximizes performance, empowering users from beginners to athletes in boutique studios, luxury gyms, and rehab facilities without the need for an in-person trainer.
Weill Cornell Innovation Fellow
Joining the community this year is Dr. Zev Blumenkrantz, an emergency medicine physician from Weill Cornell Medicine. He will serve as the Weill Cornell Innovation Fellow, a one-year appointment made possible through a partnership between the Weill Cornell Emergency Medicine Innovation Fellowship and Runway. In this program, an emergency medicine resident clinician undergoes entrepreneurial training at Runway and then returns to Weill Cornell to promote innovation within the health system. The Fellow acts as a bridge, connecting Runway startups with clinicians and identifying opportunities for collaboration among founders.
KEY QUOTE:
“For more than a decade, the Runway Program has been a leader in helping scientists become entrepreneurs. With 11 new ventures this year, our portfolio grows to 128 startups created from scratch at Cornell Tech. This cohort demonstrates how applying digital technologies can solve some of the most critical problems in areas as diverse as agriculture, misinformation, neurology, fertility, logistics, and more.”
Fernando Gómez-Baquero, director of Runway and Spinouts at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech
