Mayfield AI Garage at Berkeley is back and looking for more AI Founders

The Mayfield AI Garage at Berkeley is back for a second year of partnership. The announcement was made this week by Berkeley SkyDeck, the global hub for entrepreneurship and leading accelerator, UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), and Mayfield. The initiative will once again support AI-focused student and Alumni entrepreneurs.

Last year, each team of students received a stipend, mentorship from Mayfield and the partners, including NVIDIA, and Microsoft Azure compute credits to bring their visions to life. The winners included Touchstone, Interlinked, Oratora, NovaSky and TAG.

Jennifer Chayes, Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at Berkeley, said, “The inaugural year of this partnership proved remarkably successful and provided our students with access to critical elements of entrepreneurship, including access to mentorship, compute, capital, and – most importantly – to belief.

“By lowering the barriers to entry, we’re empowering more students to test ideas, form teams, and build responsibly at the intersection of AI, science, and society.”

This year, the program is open to a wider set of participants, including students and Berkeley alumni who graduated after 2022. It welcomes founders at the idea stage. The concept is to support those founders in turning their initial concepts into a real company.  Applications are now open and available here.

The selected team will be announced in April 2026. The program runs from May through November 2026. More details about the program, eligibility, and application timelines are available at mayfield.ai/berkeley.

What the Mayfield AI Garage at Berkeley delivers

This year, Microsoft and NVIDIA have again sponsored the Garage, and winners will receive the following benefits:

• Stipend of $25k per founding team member (up to $50k) to fuel the AI startup.
• Access to office space, workshops, mentorship, and all the benefits of SkyDeck’s Pad-13 incubator program.
• insights and guidance from the Mayfield team to help scale the startup.
• Receive a minimum of $50K in compute credits and other benefits to power your AI development. A total of up to $350K is available.
• through the benefits of NVIDIA’s Inception program for startups, plus mentorship from NVIDIA leaders.
• $25K of legal credits for expert legal advice to help with company formation, financing, and other early-stage legal work.

The financial benefits, including the stipends, come without any equity dilution. The AI Garage is designed so that founders do not have to choose between completing their degree and building their startup.

The 2026 cohort will be slightly smaller than last year’s. The Garage will consist of four winning teams – two undergraduate teams and two teams from Berkeley’s AI research labs.

Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield, commented, “Mayfield has a proven track record of helping transform breakthrough ideas into iconic companies by investing in people first and meeting founders at the inception stage. We’re excited to build on the Mayfield AI Garage’s successful first year with students, and expand to Berkeley alumni who are building the future of AI.” 

Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck. “We’re seeing incredible AI innovation from our Berkeley community, and the Mayfield AI Garage gives students and young alumni the runway to develop their ideas without the pressure to compromise their education or give up ownership of their vision.

“We’re excited to provide students and recent alumni a serious pathway to pursue entrepreneurship in a way that works for them.”

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

The one at Berkeley is the second such initiative that Mayfield has launched in recent weeks. It also launched the Mayfield AI Garage at HumanX.

The Mayfield AI Garage program features a unique partnership between venture capital and a public research university. Focusing on student access, non-dilutive support, and lasting founder development rather than standard early-stage investments.

For the university, it provides tangible benefits to students, both current and newly graduated, as they begin a startup. As the program continues, it could easily become something that increases applications to the university and makes it more attractive.

Mayfield is clearly seeing success from these Garages, as it looks to support the startups. Not just within the Garage but potentially by offering early-stage funding. And it believes that the founders can deliver on their ideas. There are no strings attached for the winners, but the relationship built with Mayfield could increase the chance of further funding and de-risk the investment for Mayfield.

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