Schmidt Family Foundation backs The Engine's climate 'Decelerator' pilot

The Engine has launched a new climate preservation initiative with support from the Schmidt Family Foundation as more philanthropy flows into the MIT-founded nonprofit's Tough Tech platform. The pilot is designed to keep knowledge, data and informal IP from winding-down climate ventures available to future founders and researchers.

Why it matters: - The Decelerator is meant to keep climate innovation from being lost when startups shut down. - The pilot could turn failed or winding-down ventures into reusable public goods for future founders and researchers. - The Engine is also showing that donors are funding the infrastructure around hard science, not just individual companies.

What happened: - The Engine launched the Decelerator, a pilot initiative supported by the Schmidt Family Foundation. - The program will preserve institutional knowledge, data and informal IP from climate ventures that plan to wind down. - The Engine will work with founders to contextualize and distill their work into an open repository. - The repository is meant to be accessible to future founders and researchers. - Learn more about the Decelerator at more information.

The details: - The Engine became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit a year ago after being founded by MIT in 2016. - The nonprofit describes itself as a catalytic destination for funders supporting commercialization of hard science. - Kyle McEneaney, director of the Climate Tech program at the Schmidt Family Foundation, said accelerators can be a distribution point for innovation at risk of being stranded. - McEneaney said the pilot is intended to make the climate innovation ecosystem more efficient. - The Engine says the work will preserve successes for others to build on and preserve lessons from failure for others to learn from. - The Engine says the initiative will help create public goods and improve ecosystem efficiency. - In the past year, funders have committed to separate pieces of The Engine's work, including national fellowships, climate infrastructure, IP preservation and programming for research translation and venture formation. - These investments are helping The Engine evolve into a connected platform for Tough Tech entrepreneurship. - The Engine says founders and researchers can use that platform to access programs, infrastructure, capital and partners needed to move technologies from idea to market. - The National Science Foundation is extending its award to The Engine to lead The Builder Platform for the inaugural and second cohort of NSF Regional Innovation Engines. - The Builder Platform supports 21 regional ecosystems with guidance, peer learning communities, convenings and on-demand advisory support. - The Rockefeller Foundation is supporting expanded founder resources nationally, including Blueprint accelerator expansion, open-source content libraries and the Tough Tech Map. - The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is funding three years of programming and entrepreneurial training for the Moore Inventor Fellows, a national community of 50 scientist-inventors. - MassCEC has awarded The Engine two grants to support climatetech founders, including funding for early-stage teams in Blueprint and a seven-figure investment in equipment and infrastructure. - The Cummings Foundation is funding three years of core incubation and acceleration work for lab-to-market startups in Massachusetts. - MassCollab is funding a deeper partnership between Activate and The Engine that will bring Activate Boston Fellows into The Engine's Cambridge facilities. - The MassCollab partnership will also expand joint programming, commercialization support and resources for Tough Tech founders.

Between the lines: - The funding mix suggests The Engine is being built less like a single accelerator and more like shared national infrastructure for deep-tech commercialization. - The Decelerator reflects a shift from only backing new ventures to capturing value from ventures that do not survive. - That approach could matter in climate tech, where long timelines and capital intensity make failure expensive and knowledge easy to lose.

What's next: - The Engine will use the Schmidt-backed pilot to test whether stranded climate assets can be preserved and reused at scale. - The organization is expanding its national reach through new fellowships, programming, content, and infrastructure support. - The Engine is also asking for continued gifts and partnership support to broaden its Tough Tech platform.

The bottom line: - The Engine is trying to make climate and Tough Tech innovation more durable by preserving knowledge from both success and failure, while building a broader philanthropic base around the ecosystem that supports it.