Waypoints 2026 recap

Most frequently, by the time an investor meets a company, the important choices have already largely been made. The ability to influence still exists, but through the lens of course correction rather than changing the underlying architecture. We approach this from a different angle, soliciting input on venture strategy, positioning, and market context at a stage where those decisions can still shape what we build and how it will go on to impact the world around us.

Our philosophy is that for the highest-impact innovations being developed at the DOE national laboratories with taxpayer dollars, the highest return on that investment comes from creating high-growth, agile, and mission-oriented startups with a chance of radically changing the way we do things and how we interact with the world. This is inherently a hard task, and it requires deep partnership with people from across the innovation ecosystem. COMPASS has assembled a growing group of investors, entrepreneurs, industry operators, and national lab talent who can help us take on this challenge. We rely on this group for advice on what we should build, how we should build it, and where to find the support to launch and grow these startups.

In short, intentional meetings, investors sat down with researchers from six of our partner labs developing novel technologies across autonomy and intelligent systems, advanced sensing, advanced manufacturing, and energy. The matchups were curated with our venture capital advisory network over the past six months, and each one was a chance to meet a team and stress-test assumptions. Waypoints held more than 200 scheduled investor-researcher meetings over the course of the day.

The conversations at Waypoints are a critical part of how COMPASS chooses where to spend its time and resources. Our technologies are early on purpose. We believe two of the most powerful tools in early-stage technology commercialization are agility and optionality: the power to change course, pivot, and build on winning ideas. These conversations were about iterating on each thesis and shaping the best, highest-impact version of each technology. Unstructured conversation also opens up alternative pathways for technology development, such as partnering with other startups to accelerate time to market.

The afternoon program gave a closer look at how COMPASS works, with remarks from partners SRI International on the importance of early due diligence, and Roadrunner Venture Studios on the importance of building the right team. We then held a panel on bringing national lab innovation to market with founders, investors, and lab leaders who have direct experience commercializing and funding technology developed at the national labs, moderated by David Kistin of Sandia National Laboratories. On the panel:

Waypoints was a milestone for the first COMPASS batch, and we've used what we learned to select the first five ventures COMPASS will build. We're now building the founding teams for them.

Meet all thirty opportunities in The First Batch. If one of them is the company you want to build, or if you want to work directly with the team behind a technology, please reach out. If you invest in hard technology and want to be at the next Waypoints, join our investor network. We're also looking for advisors with sector-specific knowledge and demonstrated experience going from zero to one.