NYCEDC Hosts Gotham Foundry Advanced Materials Pitch Competition

Ouros Materials, CocoaFiber, EquiPad, and Tastee Tape to Receive Funding from $20,000 NYCEDC Impact Award and $5,000 Columbia University Grant to Facilitate Innovation in Material Technologies

Pitch Day Caps off Six-Week Program Featuring Pitch Training, Mentorship, and Networking Opportunities

NEW YORK, NY-New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), Gotham Foundry, and Communitas America, celebrated the winners of the inaugural Gotham Foundry Advanced Materials Pitch Competition, a program designed to empower the next generation of regenerative materials innovators in New York City. Sponsored by NYCEDC, with support from Columbia University School of Engineering, the pitch competition was part of Earth Day celebrations at CUNY Advanced Science Research Center's Fifth Annual Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) Symposium and is part of New York City's strategy to build commercialization capacity, surface emerging talent, attract investor attention, and demonstrate a commitment to converting world-class research into market-ready companies.

The competition is the centerpiece of the newly established NYCEDC Impact Award: Materials of the Future, designed to accelerate commercialization and connect researchers, founders, industry leaders, and investors across New York City's vibrant life science and innovation ecosystem. The program and culminating event builds on the September 2025 opening of Gotham Foundry, the first-of-its-kind sustainable materials innovations hub, and doubles down on NYCEDC's ongoing commitment to fostering life sciences entrepreneurship. The program provided a cohort of ten early-stage companies and entrepreneurs with pitch training, mentorship, and networking opportunities, all culminating in yesterday's pitch day competition event where Ouros Materials, CocoaFiber, EquiPad, and Tastee Tape received a total of $25,000 in prizes-$20,000 in NYCEDC Impact Award funding and a $5,000 grant from Columbia University-to advance their technologies. Communitas America, a New York City-based nonprofit accelerator operating an incubator space in West Harlem and advancing community-driven impact entrepreneurship since 2018, co-hosted the pitch competition.

"NYCEDC is proud to support the next generation of innovative, early-stage companies and entrepreneurs who are pushing the bounds of regenerative material science right here in New York City," said NYCEDC Interim President & CEO Jeanny Pak. "Congratulations to our winners and all those who competed for the NYCEDC Impact Award at yesterday's Gotham Foundry Advanced Materials Pitch Competition. NYCEDC is committed to investing in pioneering companies, like this year's cohort, to continue to cement New York City as a global leader in the deep-tech and materials innovation."

"Congratulations to the winners of the NYCEDC Impact award, and the inaugural cohort of Gotham Foundry Advanced Material teams, they represent a new generation of biomaterial entrepreneurs spearheading engineering solutions that will positively impact humanity and our planet," said Dean of Columbia Engineering and Chair of the Governance Committee of Gotham Foundry Shih-Fu Chang. "We are grateful for the Gotham Foundry partnership, which fuels a deep-tech ecosystem by uniting the city, community partners at West Harlem and beyond, leading academic institutions, and legacy industries like Fashion, Construction, and Health to accelerate material innovation from ideation to the marketplace."

"This is exactly the kind of momentum that we are looking to achieve with Gotham Foundry," said Founding Director of the Nanoscience Initiative at CUNY ASRC Rein Ulijn. "When researchers, founders, and industry connect in a focused way, ideas move quickly toward real impact. What stands out from the winners today is the quality and creativity of the ideas, but especially how rapidly they are becoming real."

"This pitch competition is a powerful example of what long-standing collaboration across public, private, and academic sectors can make possible," said Sunmoon Jang, Co-Executive Director of Communitas America. "We're especially encouraged by the ten founders presenting today, who are advancing sustainable materials across industries-from fashion and cosmetics to construction and food-while building with the communities they serve. That proximity to community is what turns innovation into real impact."

This spring's program brought together ten pioneering startups and early-stage founders, each selected for their bold solutions harnessing advanced materials to tackle real-world challenges and reshape industries. This year's cohort included a diverse lineup of startups:

• Ouros Materials: Turns CO2 into high performance fire-resistant composite materials, aiming to decarbonize the built environment.
• CocoaFiber: Converts chocolate industry agricultural waste into high performance biomaterials.
• EquiPad: Makes greener, safer menstrual care extremely accessible.
• Tastee Tape: Replaces plastics with biodegradable, food-safe, cost-effective flexible packaging for food CPG businesses, reducing forever chemicals (PFAS).
• Amatec: Manufactures and installs high-performance walls using industrial waste, enabling storm- and fire-resistant homes at no extra cost.
• Anew Material: Builds a biodegradable, microplastic-free coating platform from plant-based materials to replace petrochemical films in cosmetics, textiles, and packaging.
• BioWraptor: Develops peptide-based technology to stabilize perishable biomolecules at room temperature, eliminating cold-chain storage and broadening access to medicines and research tools.
• Cellsense: Transforms algae and cellulose into beads and bead fabrics, eliminating microplastics across fashion, jewelry, and beauty industries.
• ChromaNova: Creates high-precision optical sensing for next-generation robotic touch.
• ECO-SKIN: Grows plastic-free, biodegradable bandages designed for better healing.

Over the course of the program, participants received tailored mentorship from industry partners including Gotham Foundry, SOSV NY, and Newlab. The Pitch Day judges included Benjamin Cox from the Midtown Manhattan Small Business Development Center at Baruch College; Ally Friedman from the Bezos Earth Fund; Maria Gotsch from the Partnership Fund for NYC; Viq Pervaaz from NYCEDC; and Sam Sia from Harlem Biospace and Columbia University. First place finisher Ouros Materials received $10,000 in funding, while the three runners-up, CocoaFiber, EquiPad, and Tastee Tape, were awarded funding of $5,000 each for their outstanding innovation and potential impact in the advanced materials sector.

"Gotham Foundry is doing something extraordinary in bringing together city government, academia, labs, and industry partners that materials innovation needs to thrive," said Ouros Materials Founder Teresa Liu. "We're honored to win the inaugural pitch competition and will put this $10K directly toward accelerating sample production for customers ready to test our fire-resistant, carbon-sequestering composites!"

"New York is my hometown, and building CocoaFiber here-converting cocoa waste into next generation of textile fibers-is an opportunity I could not have imagined, especially after spending years immersed in the heart of Italy's textile regions," said CocoaFiber Founder & CEO Shannen-Kaylia Henry. "Coming home to build the future of materials in this city, with the support of Gotham Foundry, means everything."

"It felt incredible to pitch alongside such driven and smart people tackling the challenges I think about a lot," said EquiPad Founder Sanjana Gurram. "I'm very excited to continue building community in the Gotham Foundry ecosystem."

"Gotham Foundry has been pivotal in establishing a much-needed consolidation of resources and community for materials innovators building in the New York City ecosystem," said Tastee Tape Founder Marie Eric. "For Tastee Tape, it has been and will continue to be a fantastic resource to make the already difficult job of scaling a sustainable material less of a hurdle and more of a step. Thank you for the opportunity to share our work and the support from all the entire team at Gotham Foundry!"

The Gotham Foundry Advanced Materials Pitch Competition underscores New York City's leadership in deep-tech and regenerative materials, providing a platform for promising startups to access mentorship, funding, and commercialization pathways. NYCEDC and its partners remain committed to bridging academic research and market-ready products, positioning New York as a global hub for advanced materials innovation.

In September 2025, Gotham Foundry opened its doors as the first-of-its-kind sustainable materials innovation hub, following a contingent award of $45 million to Columbia University, CUNY ASRC, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and Genspace. Gotham Foundry is designed to support the next frontier of sustainable materials-including new bioplastics, textiles derived from food products, and other groundbreaking inventions-and is expected to generate $5.14 billion in economic output over the next thirty years while creating more than 650 high-quality jobs.

Initially located at Harlem Biospace on Columbia University's Manhattanville campus, Gotham Foundry provides access to specialized equipment, entrepreneurial support, and commercialization expertise as well as industry-specific-support at partner sites at CUNY ASRC and FIT. This collaborative ecosystem nurtures early-stage deep tech companies and translational research, accelerating the development of sustainable materials for industries such as fashion, construction, food, packaging, and healthcare-all industries that were represented in the inaugural Advanced Materials Pitch Competition cohort.

About NYCEDC
New York City Economic Development Corporation is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization that works for a vibrant, inclusive, and globally competitive economy for all New Yorkers. We take a comprehensive approach, through four main strategies: strengthen confidence in NYC as a great place to do business; grow innovative sectors with a focus on equity; build neighborhoods as places to live, learn, work, and play; and deliver sustainable infrastructure for communities and the city's future economy. To learn more about what we do, visit us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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