Twelve teams present at the Inaugural Blockchain Xcelerator Demo Day

UC Berkeley’s inaugural Blockchain Xcelerator program finished with great fanfare on Demo Day on May 7. Twelve teams presented their achievements to over 150 attendees including investors, blockchain ecosystem partners, faculty, staff, and students. The Xcelerator is a joint venture by three premier organizations on the UC Berkeley campus: Berkeley Engineering’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, the Haas School of Business, and the Blockchain at Berkeley student group.  Its purpose is to move new blockchain technologies and ventures forward through leveraging the unparalleled resources at UC Berkeley while providing unique educational opportunities for our student body and the blockchain ecosystem in Berkeley and beyond. 

The twelve teams that participated were:  

• AnChain.ai: Delivering trust through security and operational visibility
• Bitmark:  Securing property rights for data
• DataAgora: Privacy-preserving AI
• Dyson Network: Accelerator for all blockchains 
• FourthState Labs: Payment infrastructure for crypto assets
• Insolar: Global innovator in public and private blockchain solutions
• Playtable: A platform for social games 
• Source:  Future standard for information management
• SWFT Pay: One stop, cross-chain payments
• TruSource: Connecting blockchain to real world data
• Vinculara: Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of carbon credits
• zkSystems: Scalable DLT protocol for IoT

Each team shared their progress and their innovative solutions to complex blockchain issues. Their successes are an impressive demonstration of the intellectual advantage gained from leveraging the Berkeley blockchain ecosystem.  Since Demo Day, the Xcelerator teams have had strong interest from investors with the teams seeking funding in discussions with various venture capital firms.

Want to get in on the action? Applications for the fall 2019 Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator will be accepted beginning from July 22nd to August 15th on the F6s platform here, with programming running from September 23rd to December 13th.  The ideal candidates are founders with unique insight and solutions for the blockchain space who are seeking access to one of the richest ecosystems in the world for moving their startups and blockchain technology forward with validation and on to growth and user adoption.