Yale Innovation Summit adds ‘Civic’ track to spotlight innovations that address ‘society’s challenges’
HBJ PHOTO | DAVID KRECHEVSKY
Attendees of the 2024 Yale Innovation Summit listen to a moderated discussion on social entrepreneurship in the Yale School of Management's Zhang Auditorium.
When the Yale Innovation Summit began 11 years ago, its focus was specifically on biotech companies.
Hosted by Yale Ventures, the two-day Summit is Yale’s largest entrepreneurship event and one of the largest gatherings of venture capital investors in the Northeast.
Three years ago, though, Yale Ventures chose to broaden the Summit’s scope, adding the arts, climate, health and technology to the list of invited innovators and offering programs and panels related to each track.
For the 2025 Summit, which is scheduled to be held May 28-29 at the Yale School of Management, 165 Whitney Ave. in New Haven, the hosts have added a sixth track, which they call “Civic.”
Josh Geballe, managing director of Yale Ventures, said the Civic track will focus on technological and policy innovations that address the “big challenges we’re facing in society.”
“We'll have a panel in that track focused on the housing crisis and innovative solutions to build more housing,” Geballe said. “A panel on workforce and ensuring that we're training the workforce of the future. We've got a panel of investors and funders focused on the types of innovations that are in companies that are investable in the gov-tech space doing interesting things.”
A panel focused on national defense that will highlight innovations from Connecticut-based manufacturers is also scheduled, he said, while the state Department of Economic and Community Development is sponsoring an innovation pavilion that will host “office hours” with entrepreneurs and a number of state officials.
“The governor will be there. Commissioner (Dan) O'Keefe will be there, as well as a number of members of his team, and they have a number of activities going on there to bring together a lot of different resources that are available for entrepreneurs and growing businesses here in Connecticut,” Geballe said.
That does not mean the Summit has diminished its efforts on behalf of the bioscience and biotech industries, which remain at the core of the event. But Geballe concedes that there has been a national trend toward reduced investment in early-stage biotech companies.
“Anything that's related to AI (artificial intelligence) is pretty hot and is attracting a lot of attention on the biotech side,” he said. “There's a national trend — this is not specifically New Haven — but there's a very significant national trend towards a pullback in venture investing in early-stage biotech. So it has been a challenge, really, for three or four years now, for early stage biotech.”
Geballe said biotech companies are still getting financed, but that it’s taking longer. He noted some recent deals for slightly more advanced Yale spin-out companies, including Normunity, a biotech creating novel anti-cancer therapies that in January closed a $75 million Series B financing round, and California-based BioMarin signing a deal last week to buy Boston-based Yale spin-out Inozyme for $270 million to add a phase 3 enzyme replacement therapy to its pipeline.
Inozyme is testing the enzyme replacement therapy in children with ENPP1 deficiency, a condition associated with increased cardiovascular mortality risk in infants.
“The markets in biotech are very attentive to more advanced clinical-stage assets, and it is very challenging right now in the preclinical, early stage space,” he said.
Ryan McGrath, who leads J.P. Morgan Chase’s Private Bank for Connecticut, noted that, in 2024, Connecticut-based startups raised $1.6 billion in funding.
“That accounts for less than 1% of all U.S. venture funding in 2024,” said McGrath, whose company is a Gold Sponsor of the Summit. “So, the summit is growing, and we see there to be exceptional room for growth as well in Connecticut, especially across health care and life sciences.”
McGrath agreed with Geballe that AI remains a significant investment opportunity.
“AI is still one of the most opportunistic trends that will likely drive potential returns over both the short-term and long-term, and certainly a powerful force that investors should consider when building resilient portfolios,” he said.
According to the Yale Innovation Summit website, the event is expected to attract more than 2,500 people, offers more than 40 keynote speakers and panels, and offers innovators more than $350,000 in awards through pitch competitions where they compete for funding.
Geballe said the Summit continues to showcase the innovation being developed in the state, and in response to a question said he personally does not support a recent bill approved in the state Senate that seeks to regulate AI.
“Things that make it more challenging to develop new technologies, to build companies, that add burdens to them, make it less likely that those innovators will stay in Connecticut,” he said, “I think it's important that we be very careful about adding requirements that are likely to chase innovation out of the state of Connecticut.”
He added that the volume of new innovations in the state remains uninterrupted.
“There's never a shortage of really exciting new things to learn about and think about and to support at the Innovation Summit, regardless of where the markets are at this moment in time,” Geballe said.
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