Driving global innovation through early-stage investments and tailored consulting solutions.
Cria's Investment Arm
Cria and Cria’s founder have a portfolio of early-stage investments in startup companies. The portfolio includes companies in the life sciences, biotech, healthcare, AI, advanced materials, and climate spun out from university research.
Cria works with entrepreneurs as a trusted partner to lay the groundwork for future financing, then helps them scale and build collaborations with international partners, where appropriate. Its mission is to advance the commercialization of highly technical and impactful innovations.
Cria's Consulting Arm
Cria’s strength is in building and bolstering startup ecosystems by galvanizing key stakeholders, globally, such as venture funds, entrepreneurs, universities, institutes, think tanks, and governments. With a global perspective, Cria fosters partnerships that accelerate commercialization efforts, often bridging gaps between academia and industry. By guiding early-stage, science-driven startups—many of which emerge from academic institutions—Cria ensures they are equipped to address critical societal challenges in health, work, and climate. The ultimate goal is to pave the way to meaningful global impact with transformative solutions entering the marketplace.
About the Founder
Laura Smoliar, Ph.D., the founder of Cria Innovations, brings decades of experience at the intersection of science, technology, and global collaboration. As a Founding Partner of Berkeley Catalyst Fund, she pioneered a hybrid fund structure that shares profits with UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry and managed a diverse portfolio of 26 startups spanning biopharma, agriculture, advanced materials, and sensors. She has also been a serial entrepreneur and co-founded Mobius Photonics, where she built strategic partnerships with two Japanese corporations and steered the company through challenging economic times to set it up for a successful exit. She has worked on many international partnerships to push the boundaries of technology development, with partners in Taiwan, Japan, Germany, Canada, and Denmark. She has raised money from Asia, MENA, and the USA to bolster early stage technology development.
