Amidst Federal Funding Cuts, Venture Capital must now Bolster US Science Startups - says Lux Capital Co-Founder

Amidst a financial landscape turning barren for US scientists due to significant federal research funding cuts, Lux Capital Co-founder, Peter Hébert, challenges their potential rescuers - the venture capitalists. Hébert believes venture firms need to scale up their support for these emerging startups incubated out of national labs, notably in New Mexico at Los Alamos and Sandia. Highlighting Lux’s backing of Roadrunner Venture Studios, a startup incubator program, and emphasizing how other firms, including At One Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Khosla Ventures and Playground Global, are also injecting capital, Hébert illustrates mobilization to this cause. However, he indignantly clarifies that Lux alone cannot shoulder this task, and a collaborative effort is desperately required.

Lux Capital has been a persistent opposition voice to this concerning trend. In its tangible effort to offset the impact of these funding cuts amounting to billions, the firm has established the Lux Helpline - a $100 million commitment devised to aid ventures initiated by academic scientists. In parallel to this, the Trump administration’s alarming decision to cancel approximately $3 billion in research grants has caused serious implications, reported to be especially detrimental to national and university research labs that predominantly rely on federal funding for sustenance.

Towards this, Hébert’s ideology is quite explicit. He is striving to not just underpin the importance of these startups to traditional investors but also emphasize how seeding these scientific endeavors is not merely philanthropic but offers significant commercial benefits. It is, as Hébert describes, an ‘opportunity to fund the matters that matter’ and be part of a movement that can pivot the landscape for US scientific innovation.