[2026 Applications Closed]
Free UC Berkeley go-to-market support + up to $40K in prize funding!
Entrepreneurs:
Are you an early-stage climate startup looking to accelerate your go-to-market strategy? Selected C2M startups work at no cost with 4–6 UC Berkeley graduate students, whose work is supervised and reviewed by program faculty, and are eligible to win up to $40K in award funding.
The Strauch Cleantech To Market Program (C2M) is UC Berkeley’s flagship climate tech accelerator and interdisciplinary graduate course. Through a 16-week, hands-on program, C2M pairs breakthrough climate tech startups with interdisciplinary teams of UC Berkeley graduate students — from business, engineering, science, law, and policy — to assess market opportunities and build commercialization strategies. The program culminates in a high-profile summit attended by 300+ investors, corporate leaders, and ecosystem partners, where student teams present their findings and compete for $70,000 in prize funding, generously sponsored by MetLife that is awarded to the startups.
C2M is housed at the Energy Institute at The Haas School of Business and represents one of the leading innovation and impact-driven learning experiences available at the University of California, Berkeley.
FAQs
The Strauch Cleantech to Market Program (C2M) is a Program that supports entrepreneurs affiliated with leading accelerators, incubators, and government programs, including DOE’s ARPA-E, Cleantech Open, Activate, California Energy Commission-supported initiatives like New Energy Nexus/CalSEED, Southern California Energy Innovation Network (SCEIN), Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), Bluetech Valley, Cleantech San Diego, and Greentown Labs, as well as top-tier universities and national labs such as UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab, Stanford, and MIT. Many of the C2M-supported entrepreneurs have also taken advantage of programs like the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program.
High-quality pipeline relationships
with key local, state, and national sources
C2M’S CHANNEL PARTNERS:
C2M first selects a cohort of innovations that have strong potential for climate tech commercialization. C2M then hand selects commercialization teams comprising top UC Berkeley graduate students from over 20 programs, including business, engineering, science, law, policy, and the Energy and Resources Group. C2M supports the teams with professionals who bring deep subject matter expertise (e.g., renewable energy, clean water, green chemistry, early-stage venture development). These professionals guide the students as speakers, mentors and key contacts (each team interviews approximately 40 relevant industry contacts). Brian Steel, Ana Torres, Bill Shelander, and Alex Luce lead the C2M process, contributing a combined 100+ years of experience in climate tech, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Each project receives approximately 1,000 hours of free commercialization assessment. Your C2M team will prepare a customized commercialization study of your innovation and recommended pathways to market along with related presentation slides. Both are finalized in December, and you may use them for any purpose including grant applications and discussions with investors. Your team will present their findings and recommendations at C2M’s annual summit. In addition to showcasing your innovation within the C2M network, founders have valued the rare opportunity to see someone else present their technology. This lets them “stand in the shoes of an investor” and gain a more objective view of their own endeavors. View our 25 Projects, 2024 Projects, and 2023 Projects.
Investors review hundreds and even thousands of innovations before they select the few that they fund. In the process, they ask questions such as: Who will buy this? How much will they pay? Does it meet customer needs better than competitors? Is there a “pain point” likely to increase sales rapidly? Will manufacturing challenges or switching costs inhibit adoption? What market will you target first? Will regulations and other trends accelerate or derail your product? C2M will explore these and many other questions in depth for you if you are selected.
Innovators value C2M’s help with technology positioning, target market assessment, customer needs identification, business model brainstorming, funding ideas, cost–performance tradeoff insights, and deep market research that can be used with potential partners and investors.
A recent C2M study offered 9 years of cohorts the chance to describe—in their own words—what C2M’s value meant to their startups. Here are some of their quotes:
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“We received an SBIR grant thanks in large part to the incredible work of our C2M team! We are constantly using the market research we received from C2M.”
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“C2M stands out. While other accelerators simply tell you what should be done given infinite resources, C2M actually works cooperatively to help achieve those goals. Really valuable market research – overall top notch.”
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“We have a small, full-time staff mostly dedicated to developing the technology. Without C2M we wouldn’t be nearly as prepared as we are now.”
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“They did a superb job in terms of technology positioning, market analysis, and business proposition. Bottom line: excellent work.”
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“They came up with appropriate business models we thought made sense. I was impressed with how quickly they came up to speed.”
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“We asked: ‘What markets best leverage the benefits of our system?’ and ‘Should we be pushing efficiency or cost?’ The answers were exactly what we needed.”
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“They found interesting and unexpected applications for our technology. The students thought about things that hadn’t occurred to us before.”
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“It is helpful to have cost and materials data from a market perspective as compared to a prototype perspective.”
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“I am constantly using C2M documents when working with partners and investors. The program is extremely helpful.”
“We applaud your outstanding record of producing a steady stream of successes! The C2M program provides campus researchers with information and insights on the critical questions to address to move projects closer to commercial relevance, and in-depth market analyses that inform and catalyze industry investments. Several startup companies have emerged from C2M activities, so you are an economic driver of the region as well. C2M occupies a vital niche in the continuum from basic research to commercial products and services — thank you for your sustained dedication and leadership.”
— Carol Mimura, Assistant Vice Chancellor, IP & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA), UC Berkeley
- 127+ — startups / innovations supported since 2008
- $1.3 billion — raised in disclosed funding by the startups
- 1,200+ people — currently employed
- Application: C2M’s review committee does not sign NDAs for the applications, so your submitted material should be specific enough to evaluate, but general enough to protect your intellectual property.
- C2M Course: However, each startup admitted to the cohort must sign the standard C2M NDA with the students assigned to its team and with C2M faculty to allow proprietary and confidential information to be shared without concern.
- Slides: C2M will sponsor an all-day public summit to showcase the projects in its annual cohort. You will review draft slides, and we encourage you to attend the summit so you can meet and talk with industry participants.
- Report: If necessary or desired, C2M will create two versions of your commercialization study to redact confidential information before a limited distribution to C2M partners and sponsors.
The cohort selection committee will include faculty, tech transfer staff, potential investors, and industry partners (see C2M Sponsors and Partners). Out of the whole application pool, C2M’s committees will choose approximately 10 cohort semifinalists, based upon the strength of their potential for commercialization and their relevance to C2M’s program parameters. From this group of semifinalists, the graduate students will select the final 4-8 projects for C2M’s annual cohort.
Ammobia, Anthro Energy, Artyc, Benchmark Labs, Buzz Solutions, Calectra, CalWave, Carbon Plus, ChemFinity Technologies, CleanInnoGen Energy Solutions, Coflux Purification, Connora Technologies, C-Quester, Dauntless IO, Dioxide Materials, EELI Technology, Emission Free Generators, Feasible, FLO Materials, Frost Methane, Fullmoon Sensors, GenH, GreenBlu, Grow Plastics, Heliotrope Technologies, HidrogeniCs, Icarus RT, Imprint Energy, Indoor Reality, Inlyte Energy, Intropic Materials, Lucent Optics, MICROrganic, Mosaic Materials, Nelumbo, Niron Magnetics, Oleo, Opus 12, Packetized Energy, Prospect Growth, Quino Energy, Rapid Radicals, Radical Plastics, REEgen, Roca Water, Renew CO2, Scope Zero, Sepion Technologies, SiTration, Smartville, Spark Thermionics, Standard Potential, Sunchem, Sunvapor, Terrafuse, Tierra Biosciences (formerly Synvitrobio), Treau, Trophic, Tyfast Energy, Windscape AI, and many more.
Estimated Timeline:
- Mid-January: Startup application window opens
- January 22 and 26, and February 3 and 17: Startup info sessions
- February 22: Startup application deadline at 6pm Pacific
- Early March: Startup finalists announced
- Late April: Student application deadline, including stack-ranking of startup preferences and CVs
- Mid-May: Startup finalists notified of 2026 cohort—those in cohort introduced to student teams
- Late August: C2M fall course begins
- December 4: C2M annual public Summit
- Second week of December: Entrepreneur reports delivered to startups in cohort
- Before the fall semester starts, you will provide a brief information package for your C2M team, to help them begin to get familiar with your technology and its potential applications.
- Each startup admitted to the cohort must sign the standard C2M NDA with the students assigned to its team and with C2M faculty to allow proprietary and confidential information to be shared without concern.
- Each startup must commit that its founder/CEO (or someone with equivalent involvement and knowledge) will spend at least one hour per week during the fall semester (late August through the end of November) with the assigned C2M team, answering their questions, providing information about the company’s progress, research, etc.
- Towards the end of the semester, you will review the draft slides for C2M’s public summit, and we encourage you to attend so that you may meet industry participants interested in your work.
- In early December, you will meet with your C2M team to discuss their findings, and you may redact sensitive information from your commercialization study before a limited distribution to some of C2M’s sponsors.
- In early January, soon after the fall semester ends, C2M will circulate a brief survey to all entrepreneurs in that year’s cohort, requesting feedback about their experience and asking about those aspects of the program that went particularly well and those that could have been improved. This feedback is essential to maintaining the quality of C2M and we need all participating entrepreneurs to respond.
C2M sponsors and partners share our vision of helping translate early-stage cleantech into successful startups. As a result, they help with project selection, team mentoring, financial support, and introductions to leading industry experts. In some cases, we share redacted versions of our commercialization studies to thank them for their support.
