MSU Research Foundation Podcast

Inside 20 New Deals and Two New Funds with Jeff Wesley

• MSU Research Foundation • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this episode, David Washburn interviews Jeff Wesley, Executive Director of Ventures at the MSU Research Foundation, to recap a high-impact fourth quarter of venture activity. Jeff shares highlights from 20 new investments and financial transactions completed between April and June 2025, including support for startups tackling everything from microbiome therapeutics to plant health monitoring, as well as portfolio wins like the acquisition of Atlas Space Operations and a major funding milestone for Traverse City–based Takanak.

We also cover two major announcements: the launch of a new $10.6 million evergreen fund, created with support from the Michigan Innovation Fund, and a $10 million healthcare innovation fund in partnership with Henry Ford Health + MSU Health Sciences. Jeff discusses what these new initiatives mean for early-stage investing in Michigan, and why statewide partnerships are key to building a more competitive startup ecosystem.

Host: David Washburn
Guests: Jeff Wesley (Executive Director of Ventures, MSU Research Foundation)
Producers: Jenna McNamara and Doug Snitgen
Music: "Devil on Your Shoulder" by Will Harrison, licensed via Epidemic Sound

Stay connected with the MSU Research Foundation by following us on LinkedIn or subscribing to our email newsletters.

David Washburn:

In this conversation, I connect with Jeff Wesley, our Executive Director of Ventures at the MSU Research Foundation. Jeff takes us on a whirlwind tour of Q4 investing activities, also talks about the PO Financing Program and a couple of existing portfolio companies that have had some interesting news bites, and then the introduction of two new venture funds in partnership with the state of Michigan and another one with Henry Ford Health. You're not going to want to miss this.

David Washburn:

Welcome back to the MSU Research Foundation's podcast. Today I'm with my colleague, Jeff Wesley. We've heard from Jeff before. He is the Executive Director of Ventures at the MSU Research Foundation, and what that means is that Jeff oversees our venture creation company, Spartan Innovations, as well as our two venture funds, Red Cedar Ventures and the Michigan Rise funds.

David Washburn:

I thought it'd be fun to get together and recap our fourth quarter of 2025. For those of you keeping track at home, our fiscal year starts July 1 and ends on June 30th, and so I want to cover the period from April, May and June on the investment side. So, before we get started, I want to remind you this is not investment advice or legal advice. Many of the companies that we're going to talk about here are companies that we've invested in and are portfolio companies. So welcome, Jeff, and can you give us the kind of high level sort of summary of Q4 2025 from your perspective?

Jeff Wesley:

It's nice to be here and catch up with you again. Yeah, I'm just really excited about the work of our venture creation team and our venture investment team. We finished the year strong with 20 investments and financial transactions. That's been about our average over the last year for each quarter. Just really shows a consistent value-added impact that we are trying to achieve here with the Foundation. A couple other things that come to mind in the quarter just really grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Mackinac Conference. We launched our new job board this last quarter and just really neat to see the recognition here locally in Lansing for our efforts with the regional report that just came out showing our venture team is one of the most active investors in the Great Lakes region. So just a lot of good work by the team. Loved the impact the Foundation is having statewide and just excited about a new year.

David Washburn:

Great. The Pre-Seed Fund. Tell me about what we did there with Iora.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah just a reminder to our listeners out there Our Pre-Seed Fund is here to support our accelerators. We run five accelerators. With the Conquer Accelerator our tenants and MSU IP that's created. One of the ones I'd like to highlight is Iora NatureTech in this last quarter. It's a real-time carbon reporting and nature monitoring system using AI, machine learning and satellite imagery. It's currently their tenant now here in East Lansing working with us, founded by some renowned scientists and conservation leaders with some technologists. We're just really excited about this company coming out. The collaborations with MSU have been great and just excited about working this company as they move forward.

David Washburn:

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how they play out as well. Moving along from the pre-seed fund, we have a couple of opportunity funds under the Red Cedar Ventures brand. Can you talk about some of the activity with the opportunity funds?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, the opportunity fund is one of our later stage funds as our companies get down the journey of commercialization. Two I'd probably highlight recently in the last quarter. One was Arcadium. Uses buoyant micro bubbles for cell and molecular separation and research diagnostics and cell therapies. Leader Brandon McNaughton. You know the company has really hit a stride in looking for growth. They just completed a $20 million raise. Just really grateful to partner with Michigan Capital Network and Arboretum as part of this next step and just looking forward to where the company is going. Flightp ath Biosciences was another one. They develop therapies for chronic diseases tied to infections and microbiome imbalances. Matt Tindall, a great founder here in Michigan, one of the highlights you know I'd point out, they just expanded, you'll like this Dave, some of their IP out of the University of Illinois. So their platform's been expanded and we're just really excited about that company.

David Washburn:

That's great. I'd love to hear how Acadium has moved on and been able to raise venture from venture capitalists in the state of Michigan and beyond, and sounds like they're really, really making waves. Okay, thanks for that. And finally, Michigan Rise, which is the program we partner with MEDC on. Very, very busy quarter for Michigan Rise.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, it's always a busy for this team and this fund and just really excited about the impact we're having statewide. Just at a high level, just so many great companies that we're able to support here. Adderix Biotherapeutics was one I would highlight. Targeted therapies for drug-resistant bacterial infection. A company out of Traverse City, originally founded in Wisconsin. Through all the Michigan ecosystem we helped move them back here to Michigan. So just excited to work with that company.

Jeff Wesley:

Electric Plant Company a second-time founder, Justin Mast. Sensors for reading plant electrical signals to monitor health. We're excited to probably get him connected with MSU in some way. Just get excited about those agriculture kind of plant companies. Magsorbeo Biomedical biozorable implants to reduce follow-up on surgeries. This is a tenant here in East Lansing, a company that we've met. Matt Okuninski on our team is just some great work with them, helping them through some early stages and just great to see where the company is going now. Syncurrent helps local governments access funding and improve services. Company out of Marquette, Michigan. So when you look at it, just great technologies, great founders, the opportunity to help companies throughout the state of Michigan, just another solid quarter for Michigan Rise and all the team there.

David Washburn:

And lots of different sectors represented too, which I appreciate. So not only the sort of sector diversity, but I heard several companies that are based outside of East Lansing and so quite a bit of statewide reach there with that group and that program. All right, Michigan Rise also has this innovative PO Financing program that is also very active.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, great year and great quarter. You know, for many years there wasn't a program like this in Michigan. We're very fortunate to work with the MEDC and have this program here in East Lansing to give those people an opportunity to get some PO financing, find those first customers. The one I'd probably highlight is Grounded, a fully electrical, sustainable recreational vehicle company. We've done a series of PO financing. We've invested this company, really helped this company get on its growth traction. It's just great to see how this program makes a difference. We even had one of our companies now that's gone on to bank financing at this time, kind of completing and graduating out of this phase. So love what this program is doing, love its impact and it fits nicely in our portfolio in terms of our overall goals of support and really helping the companies find those first customers.

David Washburn:

Again another innovative program here maybe in their early stage sort of high-risk venture firms that need that sort of temporary financing. And now you've got Grounded, for example, that has sort of graduated from this program into a typical bank financing. Is that the general plan for these types of clients?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, that's what we'd like to see. We've been fortunate that we've done really well. It's got high risk but we've picked good founders. The founders have taken the program seriously and really tried to achieve that next step. A couple times we've gone back with founders and done repeat financings with them to give them a little bit longer time to get through some of the conditions and that are out there and just been very successful. Just really appreciate our team's efforts and how we're making this work in partnership with the startups out there.

David Washburn:

Good. Well, that was a whirlwind tour of a lot of investments that have occurred in the last sort of 90 to 100 days. To sort of wind down Q4, how do you sort of wrap up the year from the venture investment perspective? What's your take on that?

Jeff Wesley:

You know, I just think it was another great year. Our whole team continues to challenge ourselves. How do we get better to support all the great founders in the state? We're continuing to work with the state of Michigan, all the different coalitions out there, as well as Michigan State, to see how we can have the biggest impact. And I'm just really proud of the team, really proud of the support that we've gotten from the ecosystem and just looking forward to another great year.

David Washburn:

Great, Well, so what are the stats then? If you had to look back over, I don't know if you can rattle these off the top of your head you and I try to do this and it seems like they change every week. But what is the total number of kind of active companies in the portfolio today?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, it's a number that changes every day because you can look at the quarter, it goes up rapidly. I think we're about 240 active investments today, got well over $1.5 billion in leverage on those companies, I think. On top of that, it just seems like we're continuing to build the ecosystem, I think, through our network of services that we provide with the foundation between our real estate, our tenants I would say we're probably working with well over 300 companies every month with our team, and all those move hopefully move down the pipeline to get to investment and hopefully move on to better things to impact Michigan and the world in some ways.

David Washburn:

I know you have some announcements coming up, but before we talk about those announcements, I wondered if there were any other points of note for any of the existing portfolio companies where maybe we didn't make an investment in the last quarter, but maybe there's some interesting news or product developments or other news from the portfolio.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, great question. You know, when you look at what we do, supporting early stage technologies and trying to advance them, it's always great when you can sit there and go, wow, look at these successes that were achieved through that hard work and founders bringing new ideas and bringing them to market. You know a couple I'd probably point out is like Atlas was just recently acquired by York. Atlas is out of Traverse City, a ground software as a service for satellites. They were purchased by York. It's a major defense contractor. You know they're working with the United States on the Golden Dome. You know who would have thought with the defense industry, some of the work of these great founders in Michigan and the support from the ecosystem, we're now trying to protect the US from missiles.

David Washburn:

That's pretty cool, that is cool.

Jeff Wesley:

So you know it takes sometimes longer than we want, but great to see for this company and just really proud of the team and a nice win for Michigan. And look at the impact that we potentially could have for many through this startup that has achieved this next level of success. That's great, you know. Another one is Takanak. Again, Traverse City had a great quarter. It provides innovative digital and power solutions. Just got a I think it was a $500 million commitment and capital from Archlight and Digital Bridge. This is in a really active space of infrastructure right now and bringing more electrical and digital technologies to market. Just great to see this second-time founder achieve this success in a relatively short period of time and just again, another timely innovation at the right time that's gaining momentum in the US and another great win for Michigan.

David Washburn:

Congratulations, and both of those are portfolio companies of either Rise or Red Cedar, or maybe both. Well, that's great news. I think the other great news is some new announcements. So there's two that I have in mind, and I don't care which order you take them, but just, I think what I would chalk these up is to the value of partnerships, and I wondered if you could launch into that.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, partnerships and collaborations are everything to what we represent here at the Foundation, at the university and a lot of our work around venture creation and venture investment. We're really proud to be one of the five part of the Michigan Innovation Fund that the governor has spoken about over the last couple years. We're now getting into the execution mode where those grants are getting completed and the capital's coming in. We're going to be able to impact Michigan in new ways. Just really excited about working with the other partners in the state in alignment to achieve a bigger purpose for this state. We have so much momentum over the years but we're really getting to another level where these partnerships are driving greater strategies and, hopefully, greater impact. And we're just blessed and thankful to the MEDC and just great here at the Foundation that we're one of those that has been building over the years and now is excited to be part of something new and really drive these new evergreen funds forward for all of us.

David Washburn:

And I think this was an initiative done by the governor's administration to um address this sort of shortfall, uh, and lack of really really early stage high risk investing, and I think um one one of the one of the things they were doing was sort of taking note of what was happening um at at our neighbor states or neighbor neighboring states, if you will, uh and, and this feels like and this feels like knock on wood. Hopefully we're at the front end of this initiative and that more of this will come in the long run to continue to make the state competitive.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, a salute to the whole state of Michigan that for many years has tried to build a pipeline and build ecosystems or nodes around those support and venture community and now we are All that's kind of colliding together. It gives Michigan the opportunity to compete with Michigan, with Illinois and Indiana and other states that have stepped up in recent years. The goal is to make this Midwest not be the flyover states. I think we're there. We've had a lot of successes in this state, so this is perfect time, perfect strategy and I'm very thankful to the state that's not thinking about the next 12 months. But how do we really build a very robust ecosystem and venture community for years to come and think long term? How do we compete and how do we put the Pure Michigan at the forefront?

David Washburn:

And who were the others besides us who got to participate in that?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, I'm just really grateful for our partnerships with Invest Detroit, Spark U of M, BRCC out of Western Michigan University. For many years we've all been building our little ecosystems and our support models and this is the first time over a two-year period where we came together and did a marathon to try to develop and bring this to another level, and I just really appreciate all the hard work that's been done by that whole group. Sometimes it's not easy to bring groups together, so it's great to see we've achieved it and we're all really focused on Michigan as the next step.

David Washburn:

Yeah, you could easily see where these groups would go compete for something like this, and the sharp elbows would come out. But, to your point, the way the groups came together, some of the top research universities in the state and some of the top early-stage venture funds and economic development organizations it's really, really neat to see. And and you're right, it was a marathon. And so, uh, congratulations to you for getting that done. Now, when those dollars come in to our organization, how will you brand that? And and um, how will folks know, uh, how to reach out to see if their company can raise funds through this mechanism?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, I always encourage first people as we change. Please reach out and check out the MSU Research Foundation website. It continues to follow our journey. As we are like entrepreneurs, we're continuing to add new funds, new support models, new programs, so I encourage you to do that. This is an evergreen fund, so it is a continuation of the hard work that we've already put in place with Michigan Rise and all the companies we supported. This fund will be early stage but write bigger checks and have more capabilities to follow on and for those companies that are further along in that journey, it's going to give us an opportunity to build something over time and and build it to an evergreen model that puts that capital back in and just keeps compounding itself.

Jeff Wesley:

Our goal really with the state of Michigan is we're just getting started. That's the goal. It's going to take a passion and a commitment by all of the five funds involved, working with the state of Michigan, to take this initial $60 million and make it into additional tens and twenties and 30 millions in future years as funding comes available. We own the responsibility to make good things happen, but hopefully, if we do that, the state will continue to align with us and continue to fund these to have the impact that we think we can have here in Michigan.

David Washburn:

Well, based on some of the portfolio companies you talked about earlier in our conversation, I can see that this Evergreen fund will continue to explore the Michigan ecosystem. For opportunities like that. It should be really, really exciting. There's another announcement I want to get to here and that is related to a health-related fund. Do you want to dive into that?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah. So we're really blessed at this time to have two big announcements in a couple weeks span. So credit to the team to look at multiple fronts. We've had the opportunity over the last close to 19 months to work with the Henry Ford Innovation group as doing our piece of a bigger partnership between MSU and Henry Ford, a 30-year partnership, but they're in the fifth year of that partnership. Our teams have been building our innovation and collaborative outreach together.

Jeff Wesley:

We've had some successful Conquer Accelerator programs, we've ran for a series of years around our accelerator, and now we've seen the traction and we're building on the momentum and bringing together what we formally consider our innovation hub around health care. Just two powerful organizations coming together MSU, Henry Ford, MSU Research Foundation. Between our startup platform that we represent here at the Foundation and our venture creation arm and our early stage funds, we're just really well positioned to support this partnership and beyond. So we're formally taking it to another level with this hub forming the partnership around future strategies, and one includes a new healthcare fund, a $10 million fund, the general partner being the Foundation and the other LPs being MSU as well as Henry Ford. Just really exciting as this state takes shape, as healthcare stays at the forefront of investment, just really excited to see this collaboration coming together.

Jeff Wesley:

Lisa Prasad, the innovation group at Henry Ford, have just been phenomenal to work with. We're already seeing traction with new pilots and Henry Ford with our portfolio. We're seeing the combination of these assets coming together, creating opportunities for new startups to get greater support and greater funding, which will be key for these companies, specifically in health care. They have the traction they need to find their commercial success. So I'm thrilled about this. I'm really excited about it and I hope that it's catalytic to bigger initiatives for the benefit of MSU and Henry Ford, and we're just grateful to be part of it and do our little piece.

David Washburn:

Yeah, well, and another round of congratulations on that one and this one. I think this thing could be hugely impactful as well to really bring that momentum to the MSU Henry Ford Partnership to help look at new things coming out of that the research apparatus there and seeing what new discoveries can be protected and then licensed into a startup company that can get some early stage funding and get some coaching. But I think a point that you've made earlier is about getting these companies who have new products and services, ideas in the healthcare space, access to a world-class hospital system like Henry Ford, I mean that's huge.

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah, it goes back to that partnerships and collaborations. If that wasn't so solid, it's very difficult to get work with hospitals. It's very difficult to find the clinical reach that Henry Ford has. So to have a full turnkey model of trusted partners with experience and capabilities to work together, we're just increasing the odds of success and we're making it easier on the founders and hopefully gives us a better chance of success with these great innovations that we see coming out of this partnership and beyond.

David Washburn:

Well, that is a whirlwind tour of what's going on here in the ventures group at the MSU Research Foundation and lots of investments made and lots of portfolio companies existing portfolio companies with great announcements and new partnerships for new early stage high risk dollars that can be deployed against some of these new inventions and innovation teams to bring new things to market. So congratulations to you and your team and your colleagues and partners. Anything you want to add or sort of wind down with here?

Jeff Wesley:

Yeah to anybody out there. We're always here to support great founders, support new ideas, support Michigan State. Please reach out to know our team, get to know us. We have locations in Detroit, East Lansing and Grand Rapids. So learn more about the Foundation, learn about what we're doing and help us connect and give every entrepreneur a chance for success.

David Washburn:

My guest today has been Jeff Wesley, my friend and colleague here at the Foundation. He's executive director of our ventures group and I can't wait to check in with you in the fall, because I expect there'll be lots of other cool announcements and new opportunities to talk about then. So until next time, Jeff, talk to you soon.

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