The Activate Fellowship is a two-year US programme that supports scientists and engineers in taking hard-tech research out of the lab and into a company. Fellows receive more than $300,000 over the two years, covering an annual living stipend, R&D and other costs, and Activate takes zero equity in return, which is the defining feature of the model. The fellowship runs through five communities: Activate Berkeley, Boston, Houston and New York, plus Activate Anywhere, an NSF-sponsored remote track for fellows not near a hub, and there is a separate Singapore Global Fellowship. Activate reports having taken 353 scientists from zero to one, producing 281 hard-tech companies. It grew out of the Cyclotron Road programme at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.