Five years of innovation at Bakar Labs, and the best is yet to come

UC Berkeley’s world-class incubator for life science and deep tech startups celebrates a major anniversary

Bakar Labs, UC Berkeley’s leading life science and planetary health incubator, celebrates its five-year anniversary this month. Hundreds of innovators filled the incubator’s courtyard during a party commemorating the major milestone. Scientists and entrepreneurs from Bakar Labs companies mingled with investors and industry leaders from the incubator’s broader ecosystem, demonstrating the flourishing community Bakar Labs has cultivated since opening its doors.

“In the past five years, Bakar Labs has reached some incredible milestones,” said Bakar Labs director Dave Schaffer. “We’ve incubated more than 50 companies that have raised over $1.3 billion in funding, we placed over a hundred undergraduate interns with our tenant companies through QB3’s QWEST program and we’re on track to open three new facilities by 2029. As a result, Bakar Labs has helped bring new treatments closer to patients, provided valuable training to the next generation of innovators, and delivered jobs and investment to California’s economy.”

A community of innovation

In addition to providing world-class lab and office facilities — and access to university, capital and industry resources — Bakar Labs has fostered a strong sense of community amongst its startups. Bakar Bio Labs managing director Gino Segre has been with the institution from day one, shaping the incubator into the supportive, collaborative and innovative ecosystem it is today.

“The most meaningful part of my work has been building community,” Segre said. “Growing a company is exceptionally challenging, which makes a supportive culture so vital. We call our tenants community members because they have a shared sense of purpose, they have a willingness to share resources and share experience. I believe the environment we nurture makes companies more successful, makes this a great place to work and makes Bakar Labs truly exceptional.”

That expertise in crafting a resource-rich and collaborative environment has helped many startups flourish at Bakar Labs. Therapeutics startup Minutia, which is developing a cell therapy for diabetes, joined Bakar Labs shortly after the incubator first opened its doors.

“We toured this building in hard hats before it was Bakar Labs, so we have seen the growth of space and community here over five years,” said Minutia co-founder and CEO Katy Digovich.

Since that day, both Minutia and the Bakar Labs community have rapidly expanded.

“The most impactful advantage has been that community of companies and the Bakar team themselves,” Digovich said. “We have found that the Bakar staff are extremely thoughtful and easy to work with, which matters more than people realize when you are a small company moving quickly.”

A more recent addition to the Bakar Labs community, Moab Therapeutics, which designs “minibinder” therapeutics, experienced a similar story of growth. When Moab joined the incubator in 2025, the team consisted solely of co-founders Josh Holter and Samuel Verbanic.

“We were just two guys and an idea when Moab joined,” Holter said.

Now, the company has expanded their team and secured a runway of funding to execute their vision.

“Bakar Labs let us transform that idea into a state of the art platform to make a brand new class of drugs, by providing all the lab equipment and community expertise we could imagine as well as connecting us with key investors who later led our round. Moab wouldn’t be what it is today if we had started at any other incubator.”

An expanding ecosystem

Beyond Bakar Labs’ startups and staff, the incubator has built a broader ecosystem of campus partners, industry affiliates and expert mentors to help its companies flourish. Bakar Labs is a proud member of UC Berkeley’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) community, regularly co-hosting events with other campus institutions that foster entrepreneurship, such as Berkeley Skydeck. To date, Bakar Labs has also assembled a network of 28 industry affiliates that provide its startups with services and expertise ranging from lab equipment to legal counsel. In addition, Bakar Labs has assembled a team of nine Experts in Residence, who educate and advise founders on topics ranging from finance to clinical operations.

As the Bakar Labs community continues to grow, the incubator will expand its physical footprint across the Bay Area. By 2029, the IGI-Bakar Labs building will open its doors in Berkeley, and Bakar Labs will open a facility on the UCSF campus. Bakar Labs will also significantly expand capacity for its deep tech incubator, Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials (BL-EM), which will move into its own building in Berkeley in 2028.

Bakar Labs has also expanded its global footprint, attracting startups from around the world. In addition to its JETRO program, which draws startups from Japan, the incubator recently announced the “GIA @ Bakar Labs” partnership, building a pipeline for startups from Singapore to move their operations to Bakar Labs.

Poised for growth

In just five years, Bakar Labs has established itself as a world-class incubator for life science and planetary health startups. That momentum has only increased, with the organization poised to expand significantly in the years to come. In his speech at the recent anniversary party, Schaffer expressed his gratitude for the thriving community his organization has cultivated since its founding.

“All of this accomplishment, as we know, is enabled by people,” Schaffer told the audience of scientists, entrepreneurs and Bakar Labs staff. “It’s all about people, it’s all about relationships.”

“I’m honored to have played a role in helping grow this organization,” Schaffer later said. “And I’m thrilled to see what we’ll accomplish over the next five years.”