Berkeley SkyDeck's latest batch is its largest of all time

Berkeley SkyDeck recently hosted what it called its "largest Demo Day" ever with its sixteenth batch of startups, though the accelerator still intends to keep its cohorts relatively small.

The accelerator accepted two dozen companies in its latest cohort. The Batch 16 startups are working across an array of industries including climate, robotics, deep tech, chips, gaming and fintech. And of course, artificial intelligence.

SkyDeck isn't chasing the AI hype just for the sake of it, though.

"We take all industries. We have life science companies, we have companies making hardware that just are not going to have generative AI on top of it," executive director Caroline Winnett told me.

But, she added, "we ask all of our startups, should you be using AI? Should you be using generative AI? Is it appropriate? And if so, does it really help your business? We're very against slapping an AI label on it, unless you're really doing that."

The accelerator is expecting to come across plenty of AI startups as it evaluates applications for its next batch, Winnett said.

SkyDeck accepted just 1.3% of the 1,800 applications for Batch 16, and the accelerator said it received "nearly" double the number of applications for the upcoming Batch 17 which will include a specialized climate-tech track for the first time.

You can also expect SkyDeck's cohorts to stay relatively small, unlike Y Combinator, which has accepted hundreds of startups in every cohort for several years now, peaking with more than 400 in its Winter 2022 batch. SkyDeck usually only accepts around 20 or so companies in each of its batches.

"We don't want to have a batch size that would compromise our ability to do the bespoke, hands-on, really personal attention program that we do," Winnett said. "We might up it a bit, but it's not it's not going to double."

The latest batch also included the first round of faculty-led startups out of UC Berkeley's Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center Bio Track: AsparaGlue and MZR Neurotech.

Yunus Ansari, who co-founded a company in Batch 16 called Roger, was also selected as one of this year's Bay Area Inno Under 25 honorees.

Nearly all of Batch 16 pitched during SkyDeck's Demo Day in September, with 23 of the companies participating. Here's more info about them.