mHUB welcomes a new cohort of early-stage startups to the 2026 mPOWER program, a four-month pre-accelerator program designed to help hardtech and physical product entrepreneurs build a stronger foundation and accelerate through the earliest stage.
Through structured programming, dedicated support from Experts-in-Residence, peer collaboration, and a shared workspace membership, participants will test the assumptions behind their ventures and develop a deeper understanding of the problem they are solving, the customers they aim to serve, and the market opportunity ahead.
The 2026 cohort is organized into two tracks, HardTech and Energy & Sustainability.
Throughout the program, startups will evaluate their ventures through three key lenses: desirability, feasibility, and viability. By the conclusion of mPOWER, participants will have greater clarity on product-market fit, an initial product roadmap, a view of key milestones for the next six to 12 months, and the foundation needed to make more informed decisions about how, or whether, to move their ventures forward.
The Energy & Sustainability track features 3 companies addressing waste reduction, resource efficiency, and sustainable production with innovative approaches that span biotechnology, AI, and the circular economy.
As the U.S. bioeconomy grows, there’s a notable gap between small scale (1-10L) and industrial scale biomanufacturing for pilot-scale infrastructure. Craft BioSolutions addresses that gap by building the infrastructure for pilot biomanufacturing, which is essential to commercialization.
Craft BioSolutions is doing for biomanufacturing what the PC did to computing, taking something large, fixed, expensive, and technical to operate and making it accessible, affordable, and easy to use
Connect with Mitchell Craft
As the climate crisis worsens, POTS patients are increasingly vulnerable to a warming planet, but this threat is not limited to the chronically ill. Climate change amplifies health risks for all of us and increases the possibility of new diseases leading to new post-viral infections.
Rachel is developing the first to market, medical grade compression legging that utilizes innovative Freezer to Body cooling fabric to provide unparalleled lower body cooling and compression for patients living with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and other forms of dysautonomia.
Connect with Rachel Porter
Dishwashing still has blind spots. Traditional dishwashers rely on limited spray paths, which can miss hidden surfaces and create avoidable waste.
AquaJet 360 is an early-stage dishwasher innovation designed to improve cleaning performance, water efficiency, and energy sustainability through an adaptive multi-directional spray system.
Connect with Cecil Young
The HardTech track welcomes 8 companies developing tangible technologies that solve practical challenges across industries. These founders are building physical products with embedded intelligence—from advanced medical devices to smart wearables—that directly improve how people work, heal, and live.
Glace Vision is creating a blind spot detection device to support professional drivers while navigating the roadways. This device will provide live updates to detect potential accidents to mitigate risk and decrease accidents involving heavy-duty vehicles.
Connect with Lisa Thomas
Goalkeeper evaluation at every level of elite youth soccer is 100 percent subjective. No standardized, machine-certified measurement system exists for the position. Coaches assess saves by eye. Recruiters rely on highlight reels. Athletes have no portable, credentialed performance record. The result is that the
most technically demanding position on the field is also the least measurable one.
KeeperLab is a sensor-based performance measurement platform that replaces subjective goalkeeper evaluation with machine-certified data.
Connect with Roy Elliott
Lily Bottle is a patented baby bottle with a built-in attached cap designed to reduce exposure to bacteria and viruses while simplifying feeding for modern parents. Traditional bottle caps are easily lost, exposing bottle nipples to contamination and creating unnecessary stress during feedings. Lily Bottle’s integrated cap system eliminates loose parts and creates a cleaner, safer feeding experience.
Connect with Janira Hernandez
Luminal Labs is building an in-home data capture system designed to address the fundamental infrastructure gap that limits gut health research today. The core insight is that the scarcity of actionable gut health data is not primarily an analytical problem — it is a collection problem. By solving the data capture layer, Luminal Labs will enable academic researchers to access a rich, high-frequency, longitudinal dataset from study participants in their natural home environments, providing a category of insight that does not currently exist today.
Connect with Shaun Pergande
UTIs are the leading cause of hospitalization in Long Term Care facilities, with older adults showing atypical UTI symptoms. With early detection methods being too expensive and too clunky to implement, it’s currently costing the U.S. healthcare system about $250 billion a year in unplanned hospitalizations.
LOO is a disposable incontinence brief with built-in UTI detection to address this problem.
Connect with Elizabeth Tomon
Noria is developing a physical product ecosystem – combining a consumer supplement and a wearable for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause. This device would track symptom patterns and collect data over time. Combined with the capsule, it would help address brain fog and cognitive disruption these women experience during this phase of life.
Noria bridges the consumer wellness and femtech space by giving women both relief and insight into their own biology.
Connect with Yosra Abdulwahid & Annais Gangolf
Resonant Works is developing a precision turntable accessory that enables a new method of vinyl playback. By elevating the record about the platter surface, it allows the tonearm to access the underside of the record and enables controlled reverse playback. This product introduces a stable, manufacturable solution that improves safety, consistency, and creative control for DJs, turntablists, and experimental musicians.
While there have been similar techniques using different objects, there’s currently no dedicated precision-engineered device designed for this purpose.
Connect with Hugo Moya
Sticks and Stones is a modular, highly portable stick-handling trainer designed for use both on-ice and off-ice. Unlike existing fixed or bulky trainers, our system features a unique interlocking design that allows it to be configured into various patterns, stacked for easy transport, and stowed compactly.
It solves the "fixed-path" limitation of current tools by allowing athletes and coaches to customize their training layout while maintaining a lightweight, durable form facto
Connect with Monica Prus Sykora & Sean Sykora