SimpliFed, a Rev member and the leading virtual Maternal Health Operating System for pregnancy and postpartum, recently raised over $10 million in a series A funding round.

Forty-two startups were supported by Rev: Ithaca Startup Works in 2025, marking another successful year for their founders, employees, and investors. Some forged new partnerships, many secured seed funding, and others earned notable awards.

Exostellar, a startup born from Cornell research, has achieved an outcome many entrepreneurs dream of – acquisition by a Fortune 500 company. Qualcomm acquired Exostellar, launched in 2018 by computer science professors Hakim Weatherspoon and Robbert van Renesse and former postdoctoral researcher Zhiming Shen, Ph.D. ’17, in March.

Rev: Ithaca Startup Works is excited to announce the 20 startups making up the sixth Manufacturing Hardware Accelerator cohort. The accelerator helps teams turn their advanced prototypes into manufactured products. Participants gain access to business mentorship, connections to local manufacturers, and introductions to investors.

Consisting of 28 teams and over 50 individuals, this cohort brings together inventors and entrepreneurs from a wide variety of industries, from pet health to urban hydroponic agriculture.

When they were seniors at Ithaca High School last year, Isabelle Cohen, Alex Elia and Jennifer Zhao hated seeing the plastic waste pile up from the 3D printer in their school’s makerspace, with no way to recycle it.

Over 10 weeks, Rev’s Prototyping Hardware Accelerator guides product teams from a “back of the napkin idea” to a fully-fledged startup. Teams participate in either the Classic, ClimateTech, AgTech, or MedTech tracks, where they gain access to experts in their industry’s field.

The numbers are trickling in for 2024, another successful year for the founders, employees, and investors of Rev: Ithaca Startup Works 32 member startups. Success looked different for our Rev members as some accepted new partnerships, some closed rounds of seed funding, and others continued to innovate. Regardless, Rev’s community continued to grow and scale their businesses while positively impacting the Ithaca region and beyond.

The Fuzehub 2024 Commercialization Competition during the New York State Innovation Summit had seven prize winners, five of which are Cornell-supported entrepreneurs. Of the five, four have participated in multiple hardware accelerators at Rev: Ithaca Startup Works and the grand prize winner is a current Center for Life Science Ventures member, a former Life Science Technology Fellow and Ignite Fellow.

In response to the 2014 opening of Rev: Ithaca Startup Works, CNN Business ran the headline: “Can this Small Town Compete with Silicon Valley?” While Ithaca has made headlines for its oversized number of startups per capita and having the highest R&D expenditures in New York state, 10 years later, it’s clear Rev: Ithaca Startup Works is not interested in competing with Silicon Valley, but in imagining an entrepreneurial ecosystem entirely its own. Over the past 10 years, Rev’s member startups have created over 1,000 jobs and generated over 100 million dollars in revenue.