Chain Reaction Innovations Unlocks Seven Hundred Million in Venture Funding

Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI), the entrepreneurship program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, was founded in 2016 to help startups grow. In many ways, the program’s own journey has followed a similar entrepreneurial path, evolving, adapting and embracing this mission. CRI’s path unfolded gradually, through years of iteration, hard questions, internal logistics challenges, early wins and course corrections. The program embedded its first cohort in 2017 with a novel idea, tested it inside a complex environment and has now created a “product-market fit” for startups within a national lab. As it celebrates its 10th year, CRI has supported 54 companies, which have gone on to raise $732 million and create…