Ekaterina Bogatyreva
Hivemind Capital, an investment firm focused on deep technology, has launched Darkmatter Lab, a new program created to help researchers turn advanced scientific work into commercial products before forming a company.
The initiative was developed in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, and will become a key part of Hivemind’s upcoming venture fund. Legal support will be provided by Gunderson Dettmer and Goodwin Procter, while cloud infrastructure resources will come from Google Cloud.
Each selected project will receive at least $1 million in combined support. This includes direct research funding from Hivemind Capital; $350,000 in cloud computing credits through Google’s startup program; legal assistance covering immigration, intellectual property, and company formation; as well as operational support through Berkeley SkyDeck.
The first group of projects will focus on artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. Areas of interest 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, giving researchers access to capital, infrastructure, and business resources at a much earlier stage than traditional startup funding models.
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