BOSTON — Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship today announced the 2026 cohort of the Rock Venture Catalyst, the School’s flagship summer program supporting MBA student founders as they build and scale new ventures.
Formerly known as the Rock Summer Fellows program, the Rock Venture Catalyst has been redesigned to meet the evolving needs of early-stage founders. The program provides a select group of HBS MBA students with funding, mentorship, and a structured, immersive environment to pursue their ventures full time over the summer.
During the first week of Rock Venture Catalyst, students heard from 2026 graduates who are founders about their experiences.
This year, 61 students were selected through a highly competitive application process to participate in the program. The cohort represents a diverse range of industries, including artificial intelligence, healthcare, climate technology, fintech, and consumer products.
“The Rock Venture Catalyst is a powerful bridge between classroom learning and real-world execution,” said Thara Pillai, Director of the Rock Center. “Each year, we see founders transform early ideas into tangible ventures with real customers, products, and funding momentum.”
“Entrepreneurship is fundamentally about learning through action – testing ideas in the real world, adapting quickly, and building something that creates value,” said Professor Shikhar Ghosh, faculty chair of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. “The Rock Venture Catalyst gives students the time, structure, and support to fully immerse themselves in that process, accelerating both their ventures and their development as founders.”
The Rock Venture Catalyst is designed as a summer-long immersion, enabling founders to step away from traditional internships and focus exclusively on building their startups. Fellows receive non-dilutive funding, access to experienced coaches and Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, and support from a tight-knit peer community.
Ali Black (MBA 2027) pitches her start-up Sunday, AI decision engine for art, to the Rock Venture Catalyst cohort.
The program begins with a required four-week, in-person module in Boston, where participants engage in a faculty-led “learning by doing” curriculum focused on startup fundamentals. This is followed by a virtual module that allows founders to continue building their ventures with ongoing mentorship and accountability.
Throughout the summer, teams test and validate ideas, develop prototypes, and engage with potential customers and investors. Many participants leave the program having secured early traction, including letters of intent, pilot customers, or initial funding.
The program culminates in the Rock Venture Catalyst Showcase in August, where founders present their progress to the HBS faculty, entrepreneurial community, investors, and industry leaders.
“Rock Venture Catalyst gave me access to a network and resources that were instrumental in getting Blitzy off the ground,” said Brian Elliott (MBA 2024), a former Rock Venture Catalyst participant and CEO of Blitzy, an AI-powered software development platform. Since participating in the program, Blitzy has emerged as one of Boston’s newest unicorns, raising more than $200 million and achieving a valuation of approximately $1.4 billion. “The best advice I can give a founder is to focus on building and selling over the perfect plan. Action begets information, not the other way around.”
The Rock Venture Catalyst is part of the broader ecosystem of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, which supports HBS students and alumni through courses, competitions, funding opportunities, and a global network of advisors and founders.
The 2026 Rock Venture Catalyst cohort.
2026 Rock Venture Catalyst Teams
ABC Design
Danielle Angela Limcaoco, MBA 2027, Founder
ABC Design is an AI-native design studio for early and growth stage startups.
Air Right Exchange of America (AREA)
Joey Ravenna, MBA 2027, Founder
AREA is a network for transferring air rights—the zoned but unbuilt square footage above properties—over distance, to other properties where they can be used. It’s Zillow meets TurboTax, for air rights.
Alto
Thejeswi Ramesh, MBA 2027, Founder
Alto turns how each advisor thinks into a knowledge graph — automating admin, compounding their edge, and growing their book.
Amalia
Andres Ibarra, MBA 2027, Founder
Amalia provides an end-to-end home care agency for seniors, operated through WhatsApp.
Batch Global
Shailen Doshi, MBA 2027, Founder
Batch Global is a men’s fertility health company that uses sperm as a biomarker, creating an app that enables men to test, track, learn about, improve, and sell their sperm.
bootk.ai
Noa Schwartz, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
Bootk.ai is demand-side intelligence (pricing and bidding platform) for agent builders building products that require premium content and sources. Integrated into a retrieval pipeline, the platform allows agents to decide, per query, which paywalled content is worth purchasing and how much to bid.
Brand Muse
Miles Francis, MBA 2027, Founder
Brand Muse is an AI platform that brings creator marketing in-house by helping brands decide which creators and content to invest in before spending.
Cicada Health
Kanishk Tantia, MS/MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Jolie Lerner, MS/MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Cicada Health is developing a non-invasive salivary biosensing platform that turns hormone testing from one-off snapshots into longitudinal insights for patients suffering from endocrinological disorders.
Civic Foundry
Smita Bhattacharjee, MBA 2027, Founder
Civic Foundry is the readiness platform that prepares govtech startups to win government pilots in their target cities and states.
Clamp
Alek Antoniewicz, MBA 2027, Founder
Clamp guards mission-critical production systems against irreversible AI agent actions
Closely
Miguel Estruch, MBA 2027, Founder
Closely provides risk intelligence infrastructure for emerging markets, built on physical security automation.
Contigo
Pablo Caetano, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Simon Carbone, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Contigo is building a low-cost primary care subscription for underserved patients in Colombia, and eventually across Latin America, that gives patients a doctor by video within 36 hours and prescriptions at their door, while giving doctors a reliable stream of additional income outside a broken public system.
Corev
Keegan Myers, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Alek Woltjer, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Corev is bringing designers and doers together through a collaborative preconstruction intelligence platform that systemizes and unleashes the power of Design Assist.
ELANDA
Amanda Chen, MBA 2027, Founder
ELANDA is a fully integrated vintage clothing supply chain and retail brand. ELANDA uses proprietary AI tools to optimize sorting unique vintage clothing in order to deliver quality secondhand clothes to customers at scale.
FreightFinch
Trevor Glasgow, MBA 2027, Founder
FreightFinch is autonomous air freight planning for the next generation of freight forwarding.
GeminAI Dx
Alberto Hernandez Reguera, MBA 2027, Founder
GeminAI Dx is an agentic clinical AI platform for hospitals that orchestrates specialized diagnostic AI models, both proprietary and third-party, to continuously analyze patient data and automate clinical workflows.
GoodGut
Janel Sevilla, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Good Gut makes gut health feel simple, approachable, and easy to maintain without restrictive habits, confusing supplements, or complicated wellness routines.
Handoff
Camp Geary, MBA 2027, Founder
Handoff is building identity verification software for logistics companies to prevent the rising trend of cargo theft.
Immortal Security
Aurnov Chattopadhyay, MBA 2027, Founder
Immortal Security delivers AI-enabled customer support, security, and cyber-risk insurance for enterprises using IT infrastructure no longer officially supported by its vendor.
Interlock Systems Inc.
Arshaan Ali, MS/MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Tyler Mangini, MS/MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Interlock Systems is an AI company automating the design-to-manufacturing handoff for contract manufacturers. Our platform ingests engineering drawings, CAD files, and BOMs to extract structured manufacturing data, eliminating the manual interpretation work that slows quoting, planning, and production.
Kilebenstein AI
Christopher Kilebenstein, MBA 2027, Founder
Kilebenstein AI is a forward deployed AI boutique. We measure where a team stands on AI, design the path forward, and build the workflows, knowledge bases, and agents that get them ahead. The first deliverable is a working workflow, not a sixty-page deck.
Laoh
Pulkit Walia, MBA 2027, Founder
Laoh is an assessment tool for hiring AI native jobs roles, starting with Forward Deployed Engineer hiring.
Leapfrog
David Learner, MBA 2027, Founder
Leapfrog enables faster, cheaper payments for businesses and consumers by enabling start-ups, fintechs, and banks to enable stablecoins-based payments with bank-grade compliance infrastructure.
lilac
Grace Wu, MBA 2027, Founder
Lilac turns strangers into neighbors-communities purchase together and save together.
LIORA Health
Courtney Sherbal, MBA 2027, Founder
LIORA pairs women managing complex or chronic conditions with trained care advocates who support them before, during, and after medical appointments, including joining visits virtually in real time.
Lucine
Lea Petermeijer, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Odessa Deng, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Lucine is a luxury non-toxic functional fragrance brand.
Maiz
Grace Lee, MBA 2027, Founder
Maiz provides deep sleep support powered by Maizinol, a new clinically-tested yet commercially-untapped compound proven to sustain the deep sleep cycle – designed for true overnight recovery.
Markov Health
Hoyt Gong, MBA 2027, Founder
Markov Health provides agentic medical and pharmacy claims analytics to reduce employer healthcare costs
Meridian
Taylor Brockman, MBA 2027, Founder
A performance and health platform for elite early-career professionals that helps them sustain peak output through the highest-pressure years of their career – sold to the institutions that depend on them.
Perspectiv
Hasan Tuhtamishev, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Nadia Vaso, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Perspectiv is an AI-Native Debt Collection Law Firm
Polae
Helen Fish, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Polae is a performance and reflection tool for high-performing early-career professionals.
Polytopic.ai
Simon Deek, MBA 2027, Founder
Polytopic.ai is an AI operations platform for SMBs. It deploys agents inside the tools companies already use that continuously build context about the business — its clients, processes, and history. That deepening knowledge powers automated workflows that get better over time, turning manual operations into reliable, executed work.
Potluck Club
Daniel Schwartz, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
Potluck Club is a social app for home cooks to save recipes, share what they cook, and discover new favorites through friends they actually trust.
Propelia
Inigo Fernandez, MBA 2027, Founder
Propelia helps search fund backed companies to develop and implement an AI strategy
Protego
Emiliano Galvan Munoz, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Arturo Hernandez Balderas, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Protego is building an AI-powered digital insurance broker that makes policies understandable, comparable and easy to buy for Mexican consumers. Protego addresses the current opaque distribution system that drives millions away from insurance, leaving Mexico with lower insurance penetration than comparable LATAM markets.
Resonate
Ed Gerrard, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
Resonate is a cursor for musicians – an AI assisted music creation platform that empowers musical creativity, giving agency without taking away authorship.
Rilear Industries
Danny Vedova, MBA 2027, Founder
Rilear Industries is making an undersea Tesla supercharging network to charge batteries underwater.
Safely Track
Thomas Campbell, MBA 2027, Founder
Safely Track turns site photos, voice notes, and field observations into client-ready safety reports, so Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) consultants spend more time billing and less time formatting.
Sapling
Dilan Dubey, MBA 2027, Founder
Sapling is the AI platform that helps employees track their work and performance, get real feedback, and frees managers from the manual burden of performance reviews!
Sawa
Ziad Hassan, MBA 2027, Founder
Sawa is an AI-native agency that builds and markets digital products for large creators and personal brands.
Scouter Technologies
Kiera Klinsky, MBA 2027, Founder
Scouter is building technology for hiring, starting with modeling test monitoring software.
Semagram
Skyler Liu, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
Semagram is an agentic AI platform automating power grid interconnection workflows.
SentryStack
Connor Elkin, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
SentryStack secures the shadow AI applications of large enterprises.
Spectral Autonomy
David Neary, MBA 2027, Founder
Spectral Autonomy makes AI enabled electromagnetic protection systems, so the same techniques that can jam enemy drones, degrade missiles, and spot incoming threats on advanced jets can now also protect transport planes, ships, stadiums, and even skyscrapers, saving human lives.
Sunday
Ali Black, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
JC Moubarak, MS/MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Salome Sommer, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Sunday is an AI decision engine for art that replaces subjective speculation with bankable data to unlock $2T in illiquid wealth.
TableIQ
Ashvin Nagarajan, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
Michael Neiswander, MBA 2027, Co-Founder
TableIQ is an agentic AI video analytics platform for restaurants and small retail stores.
Tector Therapeutics
Matheus Pacifici, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
Tector Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing first in class protein degraders against Cancer.
Troptix
Emmanuel Sylvester, MS/MBA 2027, Founder
TropTix is a digital-first ticketing and event infrastructure platform built for the Caribbean and its diaspora.
Valyn
Avery Bang, MBA 2027, Founder
Valyn is building a purpose-built battery longevity testing platform in North America. We provide dedicated, industry-specialized, ISO 17025 accredited thermal aging capacity with cell and module capability so EV, energy storage, and data center builders can qualify batteries without rationing tests or compromising data integrity.
Varsity Office Hours
Clara Geffs, MBA 2027, Founder
Varsity Office Hours is a peer-to-peer networking platform for student athletes seeking college recruitment and college athletes seeking NIL opportunities.
Verno
Oliver Wesche, MBA 2027, Founder
Verno is the AI-native collaboration platform built for the engineers who design the physical world—oil refineries, chemical plants, water systems. We turn the slowest, most error-prone work in process engineering—editing and QA/QC of P&IDs—into a fast, intelligent, multiplayer workflow. Think Cursor for the diagrams that run global industry.