Blue Bear Ventures spun out of UC Berkeley's CITRIS Foundry deep tech accelerator and maintains unique relationships with top research labs at UC Berkeley, UCSF, MIT, and Stanford, giving them unusually deep access to scientist-founders and university research. The fund focuses specifically on co-founding teams from labs working at the intersection of health and climate—such as gene therapy, synthetic biology, and next-generation batteries—rather than investing in lone founders or abstract ideas.