Beyond Yourself, Entrepreneurship Edition
Innovation is core to how entrepreneurs solve problems. And today, those problems are bigger and more pressing than ever. Climate change is demanding that the global economy rethink fossil fuels that have powered industry for generations. The pandemic has left a still-fragile supply chain, coupled with a smaller, more assertive workforce in its wake. Meanwhile a new technology, generative artificial intelligence, threatens to upend everything all over again.
Thankfully, Haas entrepreneurs are tackling these and other big challenges with the kind of innovation that only startups steeped in principle can bring.
On the following pages, you’ll meet eleven of these trailblazing companies that are forging exciting paths on traditional terrain—transportation and logistics, labor challenges, and the developing world—along with pioneering the fresh territory unfolding around AI. In the spirit of innovation, we’re also taking you beyond the page into the digital realm, where you can learn more about each startup.
Harnessing AI
QuantumStreet AI
Chida Khatua, MBA 16
Co-founder & CEO
Art Amador, MBA 16
Co-founder & COO
Chris Natividad, BS 04, MBA 16
Co-founder & Chief Investment Officer
Fintech startup QuantumStreet AI, an IBM partner, is a portfolio management and market intelligence platform for banks, asset managers, and wealth managers. QuantumStreet AI equips them with cutting-edge, explainable “temporal AI” that goes beyond traditional analysis. By blending structured data, like financial metrics, with unstructured data from global news, technical signals, and macroeconomic indicators, QuantumStreet provides a holistic view of market dynamics, including real-time forecasts and explanations.
“No tool existed to look at everything together—to quantify the different insights on the financial industry,” Chida Khatua says. “So, we built the first tool in the industry that combines both structured data and unstructured data and creates insight. This empowers users to make smarter, data-driven investment decisions while also democratizing access to advanced tools that were once exclusive only to the largest financial institutions.”
How it’s shaping a better future
Through its unique platform and proprietary technologies, QuantumStreet AI is reshaping investment management with transparency, precision, and a commitment to institutional-grade reliability.
By 2025, global stock trading is projected to be $143 trillion, Khatua says.Comprehensive, easy-to-use, AI-driven insights ensure more informed decisions and better financial literacy.
“We built the first tool in the industry that combines both structured data and unstructured data and creates insight.”
Khatua points to research from the Man Group, which suggests that by 2040, 99% of all assets will be directly or indirectly influenced by AI. “Our core intent was to give this very sophisticated analysis in a simplified form to investors,” he says. “While our technology is sold to institutional clients, their end customers, who are both institutions and individual investors, benefit from it.”
Why investors are excited
QuantumStreet AI boasts major clients like HSBC, BNP, and Deutsche Bank, and has $6.5 billion in client assets across five continents. The increasing demand for AI-driven investment solutions, coupled with the platform’s ability to manage and analyze massive amounts of data in real time, positions QuantumStreet AI as a market leader.
Future Plans
QuantumStreet is expanding beyond institutional clients to target wealth management.
Learn more
Learn more about QuantumStreet AI.
Rumi
Ghazaleh Sadooghi, MBA 25
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer
Rumi, an academic integrity and artificial intelligence platform, gives schools a way to set custom AI policies on an assignment-by-assignment basis and is already being trialed by Haas. Similar to a shared Google doc with track changes, the Rumi platform lets professors make assignments with custom AI guidelines. Students then write their papers in the platform, which shows how they use AI in their research.
“As a tech person, I like to use AI—it’s a very cool, promising tool,” says Ghazaleh Sadooghi, who co-founded the company with fellow Berkeley student (and husband), Mo Zadeh. “But I also want to use it responsibly. I didn’t want to cheat, and I didn’t want to be labeled as a cheater.”
How it’s shaping a better future
Rather than panicking about AI or banning it, schools can use Rumi to incorporate the tool into classroom settings, without needing a one-size-fits-all approach. It protects academic integrity and provides AI transparency along with giving students equal opportunity to learn on the best AI models: Claude 3.5, Gemini, and GPT-4o.
“It’s about making it an even playing field for everyone,” Sadooghi says.
Why investors are excited
Rumi allows schools to solve for both academic integrity and AI literacy. With $450,000 in seed funding through simple agreements for future equity and grants, Rumi has already secured nine other contracts with educational institutions in the U.S., including Tufts University, Foothill College in California, and The Baldwin School in Pennsylvania.
“Schools are willing to pay for it because, ultimately, academic integrity is the number one concern for them,” says Sadooghi. “And we’re offering one layer on top of it, which is AI literacy.”
Future plans
Sadooghi is looking to adapt Rumi to other industries with similar needs, such as the nearly $30 billion, fast-growing legal tech sector, and journalism.
Learn more
See how one school benefits from Rumi.
DeepScribe
Matthew Ko, BS 17
Co-founder, President & CEO
DeepScribe is an AI-powered platform that captures and transcribes medical visits, helping clinicians focus on patient care, not paperwork. Instead of traditional dictation, DeepScribe listens to the visit, extracts important information using advanced language processing, and produces a high-quality note that integrates directly into an electronic health record.
“We really saw this as an opportunity to reimagine the way clinical data is being harvested and to realize the full potential of what AI can do in healthcare,” Matthew Ko says.
How it’s shaping a better future
Over the next two years, 1 out of 5 clinicians are planning to leave medicine, and 1 in 3 are considering reducing work hours due to stress, says the American Medical Association. Documentation burdens—two hours for every one hour of patient time—are a big reason, leading to another shocking statistic: Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. DeepScribe cuts documentation time by approximately 75% with 95% accuracy—helping physicians improve care.
“From a physician’s point of view, we help alleviate the burden of documentation, improve their job satisfaction, and allow them focus on the patient rather than the paperwork,” Ko says. “For patients, this translates to a higher standard of care.”
Why investors are excited
Along with addressing physician burnout and patient care, DeepScribe, a series B company that’s already raised more than $60 million, promises to improve business for the $800 billion U.S. healthcare industry. The platform has been shown to increase billed diagnoses by 36% and can be used to automate billing and coding as well as to identify participants for clinical trials.
Future plans
Over the next two years, Ko wants to focus on improving quality of care rather than just efficiency. “We’re asking, ‘How can we take the ambient data and provide insights to a physician to provide better care for their patients?’” he says.
Learn more
See how DeepScribe helps a doctor reduce documentation time by 75%.
Transportation and Logistics
BasiGo
Jit Bhattacharya, MBA 08
Co-founder & CEO
BasiGo aims to transform public transportation in East Africa from diesel to electric buses with its innovative financing model and asset-management software. As a financing company, BasiGo leases new electric buses (“basi” means bus in Swahili) with a security deposit and a pay-as-you-drive model—which includes costs of charging, service, and maintenance—to private bus drivers. Jit Bhattacharya says the combined financing model and tech allow electric bus drivers to break even within the first year as compared to four to five years for a diesel bus.
“We basically make it dirt simple for these guys to own and operate an electric bus and get all those economic benefits,” Bhattacharya says.
How it’s shaping a better future
In BasiGo’s base of Nairobi, Kenya, more than 20,000 buses are in operation, and they’re used by 60% of the population. Replacing a single diesel bus with an electric bus in Kenya mitigates 50 tons of CO2 per year, so electrifying Nairobi’s buses alone represents a potential annual savings of a million tons of CO2, equivalent to the emissions of a small city for a year. In addition, all diesel fuel is imported, yet Kenya generates 90% of its electricity from domestic renewable sources such as geothermal and hydro.
“Climate change is not some future for us. It’s already a reality here in Africa. So being able to take a lead in the fight … is huge.”
On a larger scale, Africa is one of the fastest-growing continents, with 1.5 billion people and six of the fastest-growing economies. BasiGo promises to reduce the climate impact of these emerging markets.
“Climate change is not some future for us. It’s already a reality here in Africa,” Bhattacharya says. “So being able to take a lead in the fight against climate change is huge.”
Why investors are excited
With a million buses on the roads in Africa, BasiGo’s massive private-sector market offers a 30% return on investment within 10 years along with climate bona fides. The company has already raised $15 million and in September announced $42 million in additional capital, including a $24 million series A funding round.
Future plans
Over the next three years, Bhattacharya aims to deploy 1,000 electric buses. He’s also exploring taking the BasiGo model into other commercial vehicle markets, such as intercity vans and trucks. “We can take the pay-as-you-drive financing platform and use it to electrify across vehicle sectors and across African markets,” he says.
Learn more
Watch a video overview of BasiGo.
Two Boxes
Kyle Bertin, MBA 18
Co-founder & CEO
Two Boxes is a reverse-logistics platform aimed at the growing glut of online returns. The platform integrates with brands’ e-commerce systems, using advanced analytics and automation to help warehouse workers assess, process, and redistribute returns faster.
This approach minimizes waste, reduces costs, and helps companies resell items that get lost in warehouses.
“Everything in a fulfillment center, from the facility design down to the software, is about sending an item to your house,” Kyle Bertin says. “Most are terrible at dealing with things when they come back because it’s just a totally different process.”
How it’s shaping a better future
A report from CleanHub.com shows customers return up to 30% of online purchases, and over 9.5 billion pounds of those products end up in landfills. Clothing returns alone released the same emissions as 3 million cars in the U.S. Two Boxes aims to enable a circular economy, or “recommerce,” ensuring that more products are reused or resold.
“Everything in a fulfillment center, from the facility design down to the software, is about sending an item to your house. Most are terrible at dealing with things when they come back.”
“When we go into the warehouse, there are backlogs of returns—literally piles and piles and piles, because this process is just so slow,” Bertin says. “All these returns end up taking a ton of time to be processed, and a lot of them just end up being landfilled.”
Why investors are excited
U.S. e-commerce is a $1 trillion business with about $250 billion returned—a rate growing up to 30% each year, Bertin says.
Two Boxes processes returns for retailers up to three times faster and enjoys 100% pilot-to-subscription conversion rates, with all customers expanding service within 90 days. In September, the company doubled its value with a $5.3 million funding round for a total of about $10 million raised over two years.
“At the end of the day, Two Boxes drives efficiency in return operations and helps returns become an asset instead of a liability for everyone involved,” Bertin says.
Future plans
Bertin wants to give companies better visibility into product returns and even flag customers who are serial returners using Two Boxes’ data. Long term, he hopes to power return facilities from the ground up.
“Two Boxes will be the best machine on Earth to process returns from any brand closest to where those returns are initiating to drive benefits for everybody,” he says.
Learn more
Labor Challenges
Caldo
Jose Alonso, MBA 19
Co-founder & CEO
Caldo offers a robotics-as-a-service subscription to help high-volume commercial kitchens automate repetitive tasks, from portioning and packaging ingredients to assembling full meals. The robotic systems are also used to produce large batches of grab-and-go meals for grocery stores, corporate campuses, airports, and hospitals.
“We’re leaning into robotics to take care of the portioning work ahead of time, which frees up labor to do more on-demand cooking closer to the moment an order comes in,” says Jose Alonso.
How it’s shaping a better future
Today, 80% of U.S. restaurants are understaffed by an average of four employees with about a million unfilled jobs and turnover rates of up to 150%. At the same time, food service operators are struggling with rising labor and raw material costs. Caldo’s technology addresses both challenges while also reducing food waste, improving consistency, and freeing up kitchen staff to take on more meaningful tasks.
“Food service businesses need to rethink how they do things,” Alonso says. “Rather than having a person count and bag shrimp, it’s better to have that person walk an order out to a customer with a smile to ensure they come back.”
Why investors are excited
Having raised $2.5 million so far, Caldo offers the $825 billion food service industry an affordable modular solution that’s capable of handling as many tasks as operators need with a minimal footprint. Unlike other robotic solutions that require a full kitchen rebuild or a huge amount of space, Caldo’s products can be plugged into any kitchen and be up and running in hours, not months. Caldo designs and manufactures all of its hardware and software in-house, which allows for customized features on a product that requires no construction and only 1 to 7 square feet of floor or table space.
“We’re challenging the traditional hardware model,” Alonso says. “Building new robotic kitchens won’t solve the existing labor crisis in our industry—empowering people to produce more with smart tools will.”
“Building new robotic kitchens won’t solve the existing labor crisis in our industry—empowering people to produce more with smart tools will.”
Future plans
With a growing waiting list and signed customers with hundreds of locations, Caldo is kicking off another round of seed funding with the intention of growing its staff and refining its supply chain. It’s also gathering back-of-the-house kitchen data to help operators improve supply chain and inventory management.
Learn more
See a Caldo machine in action.
Honeit
Nick Livingston, MBA 14
Co-founder & CEO
Honeit is an award-winning, end-to-end talent screening and interview intelligence platform. Honeit automates interview scheduling, note-taking, call summaries, candidate presentations, and interview feedback to remove weeks from the hiring process. Rather than just recording interviews, Honeit uses AI to transcribe, parse, index, tag, and summarize phone, voice, and video calls into structured interview data and talent intelligence. Using Honeit, recruiting and hiring teams can cooperatively assess candidates through real-time interview data and interview collaboration.
Nick Livingston says the idea bubbled up while pursuing his MBA and working as head of recruiting at Haas startup TubeMogul. “We realized that the interview process is pretty inefficient, redundant, and repetitive,” he says. “There are limited interview data or insights captured throughout the interview process. So how do companies get better at it?”
How it’s shaping a better future
Today, 75% of U.S. employers are struggling to fill job vacancies—the second-highest figure on record since surveys began in 2006—and the number of employers reporting labor shortages (38%) has almost doubled since 2015, according to ManpowerGroup. In the past 10 years, 2.4 million industrial jobs went unfilled in the U.S., costing the economy $2.5 trillion, according to McKinsey estimates.
In some cases, AI is adding to the problem with fake resumes and cover letters. Human conversations that verify, validate, and authenticate candidates are the best way to address these challenges, but old-school back-to-back interviews only add to the cost and backlog. Honeit’s tech reduces the traditional linear interview process from weeks to days and uses AI to quickly surface important highlights that can be shared with the hiring team, allowing companies to fill openings faster.
“With AI, we’re almost back to the basics, where we do really need to talk to someone to verify and validate that they really do know what they say they know,” Livingston says.
Why investors are excited
The global candidate skills assessment industry generated $2.3 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to generate $7.4 billion by 2032. Although self-funded to date, Honeit is open to outside investment in the future as it expands into new markets and services in thisfast-growing sector.
Future plans
The company is already working with some big names, such as Whole Foods and Holland America. But now Livingston says it plans to branch out into the services side of hiring and “leverage our technology to help companies recruit, evaluate, and hire the right talent faster.”
Learn more
Experience one of Honeit’s interactive candidate presentations.
Skillfully
Brett Waikart, MBA 20
Co-founder & CEO
Skillfully uses AI-powered simulations to help companies identify, assess, and hire based on skills rather than traditional resumes and degrees. This desktop-based system helps employers tap into underrepresented talent pools while letting candidates demonstrate their skills and abilities.
“The simulation may be a particular task, a workflow, an interaction, or a conversation with a colleague or customer,” Waikart says. “Because we have so many individual large language models all acting in concert, that simulation is interactive; it’s dynamic; it’s responsive, and it changes every time you take it.”
How it’s shaping a better future
Today, 87% of companies either have skill gaps or expect to within a few years, according to McKinsey. At the same time, people with a lower socioeconomic status are 32% less likely to land managerial roles. Waikart says that’s partially because the old way of recruiting was for employers to narrow their hiring pool to resumes from the top 25 schools. By focusing on skills-based assessments, Skillfully levels the playing field and ensures employers are hiring capable workers from the outset, no matter where they may have learned their skills.
“Basic inertia pushes employers to hire from where they hired before,” Waikart says. “But the American dream is that no matter where you come from…that with hard work, with education, you can put yourself into a better economic class.”
Why investors are excited
Having just raised $2.5 million in seed funding, Skillfully reduces hiring costs by 78% and shortens hiring cycles by 50%. Waikart says the platform’s increasingly powerful AI simulations are “infinitely customizable” for the growing $220 billion staffing and recruitment market.
Future plans
Waikart wants to expand Skillfully’s customer base to schools and training organizations, which can use the simulations to assess students’ aptitude. He also foresees a time when skills-based assessments fundamentally transform the workplace. “We have the ability to not just recognize those skills but reorganize workforces around skills—not around resumes, not around job titles, maybe not even around org charts,” he says.
Learn more
Marginalized Communities
Dost Education
Sneha Sheth, MBA 16
Co-founder & CEO
Edtech nonprofit Dost Education aims to address high levels of illiteracy in India by reaching children ages 0-6. Dost, which means “friend” in Hindi, provides preschool teachers with “talk, care, and play” workshops, training, toolkits, and activities designed to nurture holistic childhood development. Teachers then encourage parents to use Dost’s free learning lessons on literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional skills delivered via mobile phone in the form of daily one-minute phone casts or WhatsApp channel.
Dost aims to break the cycle of illiteracy and build a sustainable, community-driven support system for parents and educators.
“We’re trying to use tech to create more in-person engagement between a parent and a child so that it’s joyful, it’s fun, it’s easy to actually help your child learn at home,” Sneha Sheth says.
How it’s shaping a better future
In India,100 million parents are illiterate and half of all fifth graders can’t read a sentence. Recognizing this, the Indian government has placed a strong emphasis on addressing these foundational gaps through initiatives like the National Education Policy (NEP) and the NIPUN Bharat Mission—national frameworks that aim to provide every child access to quality education.
Dost empowers teachers and parents with the digital tools and skills they need to support early childhood development. Using technology, Dost aims to break the cycle of illiteracy and build a sustainable, community-driven support system for parents and educators alike. This approach not only addresses the gap in access to quality education but also empowers parents to help kids learn. Sheth says 99% of Dost’s user base has never had access to any parenting support before, highlighting a critical gap in the country’s educational ecosystem. As the government continues to roll out its ambitious policies, programs like Dost are key to realizing the vision of an educated and empowered nation.
“We’re trying to hit the root cause of illiteracy, which is those early years,” Sheth adds. “In those first six years, 90% of your brain develops. So, we said, ‘How can we support kids then?’ And the easiest way to do that is to support their parents.”
Why donors are excited
With early Y Combinator cred and partners like the LEGO Foundation and UNICEF, Dost has a growing number of strategic governmental partnerships, which has helped it reach 700,000 children so far and grow its budget to $1.5 million a year.
“In the first few years, we were reaching parents very directly,” Sheth says. “Now we’re the trainers of the people who do the work. So it moves faster and scales faster.”
Future plans
As Dost approaches its 10-year anniversary, it’s looking to raise $5 million, create coalitions that bring more financing and investment into early childhood education, and explore how AI might fit into the framework.
Learn more
Read about families impacted by Dost and get a glimpse of it in action.
HOPO Therapeutics
Hannah Weber, MBA/MPH 23
Co-founder & VP, Strategy and Business Development
Biotech company HOPO Therapeutics is developing treatments for heavy-metal poisoning and pioneering novel methods for radioisotope delivery, using technology licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The innovative approach uses oral chelation therapies to bind harmful metals such as lead and uranium, allowing the body to safely excrete them. This method provides a simple, accessible solution for people exposed to environmental toxins. HOPO’s flagship drug candidate, HOPO-101, targets and removes specific toxic metals without disrupting the body’s essential minerals.
How it’s shaping a better future
HOPO Therapeutics is addressing the immediate unmet need of lead poisoning, a critical global health issue that causes neurological dysfunction, organ damage, and developmental issues in children and is most prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. In fact, it’s estimated to cause 1.5 million deaths annually and cost LMIC economies $1 trillion each year. Approximately 1 in 3 children suffer from elevated blood levels, which is responsible for children in LMICs losing an average of 6 IQ points per child. In the U.S., nearly 500,000 children ages 1 to 5 are estimated to have elevated blood levels, which disproportionately affect low-income and minority populations, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“It’s shocking once you start looking into it,” Hannah Weber says. “Current therapies must be given under careful supervision in a hospital and can be difficult to acquire. We see this as an access and inequity crisis in need of a better solution.”
Why investors are excited
Along with being able to address a global health crisis, investors are drawn to HOPO Therapeutics’ dual use technology and solutions for mitigating the risk of radiation poisoning in a nuclear disaster. In October, HOPO Therapeutics was awarded a contract of up to $226 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to advance HOPO-101 as a treatment for radiological threats and other types of heavy-metal poisoning.
Lead poisoning [is] a critical global health issue that causes neurological dysfunction, organ damage, and developmental issues in children and is most prevalent in low- and middle-income countries.
Future plans
HOPO is exploring using its tech in the emerging field of radioligand therapy, which delivers radiation to targeted cancer cells.
“We’re all excited to see the scope of the amazing technology that’s been built at Berkeley—and to see where we can go with it,” Weber says.
Learn more
Take a closer look at HOPO’s science.
LegWorks
Emily Mochizuki Lutyens, MBA 13
Co-founder, former CEO & Board Member
LegWorks provides affordable, durable, and high-performing prosthetics to all amputees, regardless of their ability to pay. Its flagship product is a patented prosthetic knee joint with global approvals. By partnering with organizations in developing countries while using its profits for a tiered pricing model, even the poorest amputees can access the prosthetic.
“We weren’t founded to try and tap into the prosthetics market in the United States and make as much money as possible. We were founded in order to revolutionize access in the developing world,” Emily MochizukiLutyens says.
How it’s shaping a better future
In the developing world, being an amputee is a stigma that often prevents kids from going to school and adults from finding work. Yet, 90% of those amputees lack access to prosthetic devices. High-end prosthetic knees cost around $50,000—well out of reach for those in developing countries, not to mention many in the developed world with limited insurance options. LegWorks’ mechanical product, along with its blended pricing model, allows the company to provide subsidized knees at a fraction of the cost. Its partnerships with a variety of NGOs have led to distribution in 19 different developing nations.
“I’ve always felt this divide between for-profit and nonprofit is a binary divide that isn’t going to make the world a better place,” Lutyens says. “That’s why I went to Haas—for a good business skill set I could apply to changing the world.”
Why investors are excited
Currently looking for a buyer, LegWorks offers impressive results: 95% of users prefer the prosthetic over competitors, it requires 40% less energy, and it results in 30 times fewer falls. Even with subsidies, it enjoys 60% gross margins, and the global market remains massive.
“I don’t know any other company that successfully reaches both markets—developed and developing,” Lutyens says.
Future plans
Lutyens wants to take her experience building LegWorks and help other entrepreneurs develop smarter tactics to create impact-oriented startups. As an undercapitalized social enterprise, LegWorks couldn’t afford a full-time COO. She hopes to bring a focus to the importance of having a COO integrator—someone who holds people, processes, systems, priorities, and strategies accountable to achieve company-wide goals—in such ventures.
“I’d like to convince the world of philanthropy, impact investors, and foundations that the role of a COO integrator is something they should invest in, instead of just investing in the CEO founder,” she says.
Learn more
Watch a LegWorks success story on Instagram.
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