Leading accelerator also renames its Bio Track to Bio + Health Track, demonstrating the increasing growth of the life sciences sectors

Berkeley SkyDeck, the global hub for entrepreneurship and a leading accelerator, announced details of its upcoming Demo Day for Batch 19, taking place April 16, 2025. Ranking as the largest Demo Day in the Bay Area, Berkeley SkyDeck attracts over 1,000 investors who will be introduced to 22 innovative startups from founders across seven different countries. This year’s Batch 19 will showcase incredible solutions across a variety of industries, including B2B enterprise, fintech, biotech, medtech, fintech, and other AI solutions.

SkyDeck has also expanded its existing Bio Track, which will now be named Bio + Health Track, to reflect the expansion of startups that are working on innovations in the life sciences.

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SkyDeck’s AI Momentum: Empowering the Next Wave of Innovators

Since its first Demo Day in 2018, Berkeley SkyDeck has been at the cutting edge of startup innovation—now with 80% of its portfolio AI-focused and new partnerships accelerating student-led breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

UC Berkeley has an unparalleled pedigree for startup success, named by Pitchbook as the world’s leading university for the number of startups founded by undergraduates, the number of total undergraduate founders, and the leading university for venture-backed female founders. Collectively, UC Berkeley founders have raised nearly $60 billion in the last decade, and SkyDeck startups have raised over $2 billion.

“Since our very first Demo Day in 2018, Berkeley SkyDeck startups have demonstrated a unique ability to sit at the forefront of innovation and growth in their respective industries. We’ve continued to see progress across everything from biotech to climate to fintech and more, and we are especially proud of the progress we’ve made in artificial intelligence,” said Chon Tang, founding partner, SkyDeck Fund. “For example, 80% of our portfolio are AI-related startups and already we are seeing portfolio companies like MindsDB growing in reputation and influence.”

Following on the heels of an especially successful Batch 18 program, Berkeley SkyDeck has had a busy year building support for its student entrepreneurs, particularly in the burgeoning field of AI. In January 2025, SkyDeck announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Mayfield Fund and the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) to support AI-focused, student entrepreneurs with expanded access to venture capital and mentorship.

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“Mayfield has been involved with UC Berkeley for over 30 years, and SkyDeck is helping nurture the next generation of founders in this new era of Collaborative Intelligence,” said Navin Chaddha, managing partner at Mayfield.

Navin added, “We look forward to seeing what this latest batch of startups is working on, and help fuel the AI momentum happening across the Berkeley campus.”

Berkeley SkyDeck is UC Berkeley’s largest accelerator program. Demo Day activities begin officially with registration at 2:00 pm on April 16, 2025 at Zellerbach Hall, followed by startup pitches starting promptly at 2:30 pm. An expo and reception follows from 4:30 – 6 pm, and the evening is capped off with Demo Night, a host of additional events including a panel discussion entitled The Future of Compute: Masters of the Chip, a venture meet up, an angel investor cocktail hour, a networking event focused on the future of LLMs, a reception hosted by Bakar Labs Bio & Climate, and a corporate VC dinner hosted by HP Tech Ventures.

Berkeley SkyDeck’s Demo Day is sponsored by Daikin, Honda Xcelerator Ventures, Intel, Pillsbury and Synopsys.

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