Hawaii Department Of Business, Economic Development And Tourism

The Hawaii Commercialization Seed Fund project will increase the capacity of Hawaii’s startups commercializing research to establish corporate partnerships, align with commercial opportunities and access the necessary early-stage investment funding to take an innovation to market. The project will support the launch and scale-up of an existing $1.7 million equity investment fund, established as a public-private partnership to support Hawaii startups commercializing research, to $20 million and will support the Fund’s launch efforts to educate corporates on the commercial potential of the research activities in the state, and recruit them to be commercialization partners for Hawaii startups. Five years after completion, the Fund expects to have invested in 26 new companies that will have attracted $70 million of outside investor capital and to have supported the creation of 86 new direct jobs.