Berkeley, CA – PeraWatt Energy Inc. (PeraWatt), a California-based deeptech startup, today announced that co-founders Lucy Wu and Edson Perez have been selected as fellows of the Activate Fellowship and the Cyclotron Road program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
The two-year fellowship will provide PeraWatt with research funding, entrepreneurial training, and access to Berkeley Lab’s world-class facilities and multidisciplinary researchers to accelerate the commercialization of its breakthrough soft magnetic materials.
PeraWatt was selected from more than 850 applications nationwide as part of Activate Cohort 2026 and joins the Activate Berkeley community — the fellowship’s longest-standing community, now in its 12th year of partnership with the Cyclotron Road program. The Cyclotron Road fellowship is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), the federal government’s flagship initiative for embedding entrepreneurial scientists and engineers directly within the national laboratory system.
About PeraWatt
PeraWatt was founded to address a rapidly growing problem: the exponential rise in energy demand driven by AI and electrification. Data centers already consume vast amounts of power, and up to 40% of that demand goes to cooling systems needed to manage excess heat created by inefficient hardware. A major source of that inefficiency lies in outdated magnetic materials used in power electronics, components that have seen little meaningful innovation in decades.
PeraWatt is developing a new class of soft magnetic materials, originally created over 10+ years at Sandia National Laboratories, that deliver up to 10x higher energy efficiency than incumbent materials at high switching frequencies. The material is produced using commodity raw materials, with no critical minerals or rare earths, enabling domestic manufacturing and a strategically valuable U.S. supply chain.
About Activate
Activate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to turning scientific discoveries into real-world impact. Through its two-year fellowship program, Activate transforms scientists and engineers into founders, providing funding, technical resources, mentorship, and community — all at zero equity. Activate operates five fellowship communities across the United States: Berkeley, Boston, Houston, New York, and Activate Anywhere. Since its founding in 2015, Activate has supported more than 346 scientists, who have gone on to create over 276 companies. Those companies have collectively raised more than $5.5 billion in follow-on funding and created over 3,000 jobs across the United States. Cohort 2026 includes 50 fellows building 41 hard-tech companies across 22 cities and 11 states. For more information, visit activate.org.
About Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Cyclotron Road is a DOE Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of four LEEP nodes across the national laboratory system. Now in its twelfth year, Cyclotron Road supports entrepreneurial scientists and engineers as they advance technology projects with the potential for global impact. Fellows receive two years of research funding, a living stipend, entrepreneurial training in collaboration with nonprofit partner Activate, and access to the multidisciplinary researchers and world-class facilities of Berkeley Lab. Cyclotron Road fellows have raised more than $4.9 billion in follow-on funding, and the program’s 100 companies have created thousands of jobs across the United States. Notable Cyclotron Road alumni include Fervo Energy, which recently completed an initial public offering on the NASDAQ. LEEP is managed by DOE’s Office of Technology Commercialization. For more information, visit cyclotronroad.lbl.gov.