A Fresh Class of Founders Is Putting Down Roots Here
St. Louis just welcomed its newest class of startup founders. Arch Grants, the local nonprofit that has been fueling early-stage companies for 15 years, announced 16 recipients for its 2026 cohort — and with them, $1.35 million in grant money that the founders don’t have to pay back.
The deal is straightforward: each company gets $75,000, with another $25,000 available for those relocating to the region. The one condition? Stay headquartered in St. Louis for at least a year.
It’s a formula that has quietly become one of the region’s biggest economic engines. Since 2012, Arch Grants has handed out more than $23.3 million to 311 startups. By the nonprofit’s own estimates, those companies have gone on to generate over $1 billion in revenue, raise nearly as much again in follow-on investment, and create thousands of jobs right here in the metro.
“Every year, these founders remind us what’s possible when extraordinary people are willing to take a chance on St. Louis, and when this community shows up to support them,” said outgoing executive director Gabe Angieri.
This year’s group was picked from nearly 70 finalists who pitched in August, and the range of ideas is striking: agriculture, drug delivery, health screening, artificial intelligence, sustainable materials, and more.
From Parkinson’s Detection to Smarter Chemotherapy
Among the standouts is NeuroFore, a St. Louis company building a diagnostic tool to spot Parkinson’s disease far earlier than doctors typically can. Founder and CEO Hamasa Ebadi got the idea during a master’s program in neuroethics, where she met patients and families who wished the disease could be caught sooner. Her company’s AI-powered tool would let physicians check patients for early-stage signs and prescribe exercises that can push back the onset of more serious symptoms.
“We’re buying patients time,” Ebadi said. “It’s just something you can’t get back.” Since the tool counts as software as a medical device, she expects most of the grant to go toward the costs of filing with the Food and Drug Administration.
Curate Therapeutics CEO Chris Bethel has a similarly ambitious plan: using platelets — the blood cells that rush to heal wounds — as a delivery vehicle for chemotherapy. Because certain tumors behave like wounds, Bethel reasons, platelets can slip past a tumor’s defenses and drop a concentrated dose of proven chemo drugs right onto cancer cells, potentially with fewer of the brutal side effects patients know too well. He’s starting with pancreatic cancer, with an eye toward other aggressive cancers like metastatic lung and breast cancer and glioblastoma.
Most of Curate’s grant will fund a study in mice — the “in vivo” data that venture capitalists kept telling Bethel he needed before they’d invest. “Arch Grants became this opportunity for me to be able to get the critical funds to be able to pay for the necessary science that will get more investment, so that this thing can really get out to patients and make a difference,” he said.
Plastics That Actually Break Down, Crops That Pay Twice
Priyanka Naithani co-founded EvoNatura with her mother Alka, and the company has already moved from Rhode Island to St. Louis as part of the grant. Its microbe helps plastic materials fully break down in the environment — not just in industrial composting facilities, but in home compost, soil, and even water. The first target: compostable cutlery. Naithani says Arch Grants is already opening doors, including a conversation with the Missouri Botanical Garden about using the technology in the garden’s materials.
Amass Biosystems founder Justin Traenkle came to St. Louis from Denver for an MBA at WashU’s Olin Business School — and stayed to build his company. Amass is developing crops like Sunn hemp that grow alongside corn and soy, leaving behind biomass after harvest that can be turned into biofuel and give farmers a second revenue stream. The company has already run field trials with the Danforth Plant Science Center, and Traenkle plans to use the grant to grow his team and line up paying customers for the 2026 growing season.
“To actually be awarded an Arch Grant is validation that we made the right decision to come to St. Louis to build this company,” he said.
The Full 2026 Arch Grants Class
- Amass Biosystems — Symbiotic crops that diversify farm revenue and reduce reliance on synthetic inputs; its first bioenergy crop grows alongside corn and becomes solid biofuel after harvest. Founder: Justin Traenkle. From St. Louis.
- CERV — A medical device to measure cervical dilation during labor, aiming to improve monitoring and the patient experience. Co-founders: Elizabeth Buzbee, Annika Avula, and Sandy Montgomery. From St. Louis.
- Curate Therapeutics — A drug-delivery platform that uses platelets to carry established chemotherapy toward tumors, starting with pancreatic cancer. Founder and CEO: Christopher Bethel. From St. Louis.
- EvoNatura — A microbial additive that improves how plastics biodegrade, with applications in plastics manufacturing. Co-founders: Priyanka Naithani and Alka Naithani. From Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
- LumaNail — Fluorescent, blacklight-reactive roofing nails that make inspections easier and help contractors improve quality control. Leadership: Mike Rains, Jason Schmidt, and Peter Venezia. From St. Louis.
- Monarch Waste Co. — On-site cannabis-waste destruction and materials recovery to help licensed businesses meet disposal requirements. Co-founders: Annie Macheca and Zach McCullough. From St. Louis.
- NeuroFore — AI-enabled technology to flag possible early signs of Parkinson’s disease using non-motor symptoms. Co-founders: Hamasa Ebadi and Miles Gilliam. From St. Louis.
- New Heritage Ag — A CRISPR delivery platform that skips tissue-culture steps in precision plant breeding to speed up new crop traits. Leadership: Pei Yen and Yang Yen. From Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
- OpsCompanion — Software that helps organizations monitor employee use of AI tools and control what information those tools can access. Leadership: Kenneth Eversole, Eli Front, and Izayah Hudnut. From St. Louis.
- Quest March — An online platform blending tabletop role-playing with multiplayer online games so people can play Dungeons & Dragons together. CEO: Justin Sindecuse-Hayden. From St. Louis.
- Reflect & Restore — AI-assisted tools for student reflection, restorative practices, and school culture. Founder and CEO: Gerald Raines. From Houston, Texas.
- Symbio — On-site food-upcycling systems that turn food-production byproducts into useful ingredients and additives. Leadership: Elliott Notrica and Nikolai Valencia Glushchenko. From Bloomington, Illinois.
- Untapped Solutions — AI-enabled case-management and relationship-management tools for nonprofits, government, and human-services organizations. CEO: Andre Peart. From Yonkers, New York.
- VertiGreens — Urban vertical farming that grows fresh greens locally year-round. Founder and CEO: Tova Feinberg. From St. Louis.
- VigilanceIQ — AI-enabled tools to help transportation fleets and other operators assess fatigue risk before shifts and missions. Co-founders: Mike Bynum and Russ Harvey. From St. Louis.
- Xphera — Positioning and navigation technology designed as an alternative to GPS. Founder and CEO: JohnGabriel Nguyen-Truong. From St. Louis.
For St. Louis, the class is another reminder that the region’s startup scene isn’t just surviving — it’s attracting founders from across the country who are choosing to build here.
