The Hartford has partnered with UC Berkeley's Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials (BL-EM) to support startups developing next-generation energy and materials technologies, offering mentorship, educational programming and practical insurance and risk-management guidance to the incubator's entrepreneurial tenants.
The engagement will be led by Y-Risk, The Hartford's specialty unit focused on underwriting emerging technologies and business models.
Matt Scott, head of Innovation and Risk Services at The Hartford, framed the partnership as a way to study risk before it fully materializes.
"The technologies that will power tomorrow's economy are being developed today. Through our partnership with BL-EM, we have an opportunity to engage with entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators working on some of the most promising advancements in energy and materials science," Scott said, adding that the resulting insights would help the company develop new expertise for customers operating at the industry's leading edge.
The partnership is notably early-stage relative to BL-EM's own timeline.
The facility itself, a five-story, 145,000-square-foot building on UC Berkeley's campus designed to house up to 75 early-stage companies, broke ground in late 2025 and isn't expected to open until 2028.
The Hartford's involvement runs through what BL-EM calls its pilot program, launched specifically to build momentum with founders, lab space and mentorship ahead of the full incubator's eventual opening.
As part of that arrangement, The Hartford will also join UC Berkeley's Launch Advisory Group, where the company said it will be the only insurer among industry leaders guiding BL-EM's founders, with a focus on advanced energy systems and materials innovation tied to rising AI-driven power demand and the broader push for sustainable energy solutions.
BL-EM operates as a sister program to Bakar Bio Labs, UC Berkeley's established biotech incubator, which has already produced a meaningful track record since opening in 2021.
As of early 2026, companies that have been housed in or graduated from Bakar Bio Labs had collectively raised $1 billion in funding across 55 companies, according to the incubator's own reporting.
BL-EM is built on the same QB3-run model, applied instead to startups working across physics, chemistry, materials science, advanced manufacturing and industrial decarbonization, sectors The Hartford's announcement specifically ties to rising energy demand from data centers and AI infrastructure.
For The Hartford, the value of engaging years before most of these companies would purchase a commercial policy lies in observing how risk profiles change as a company moves from lab-scale research to commercial deployment, precisely the transition period where early-stage energy and materials companies often struggle to find carriers willing to underwrite unfamiliar technology risk at all.
Emerging technology companies in this category frequently face a coverage gap during that transition: too novel or unproven for standard commercial lines underwriters, yet already carrying real property, product liability and business interruption exposure once they move beyond a university lab bench.
Building relationships and technical understanding with these companies years before they need a policy gives Y-Risk a head start on underwriting a category most carriers won't meaningfully engage with until a company has already scaled far enough to look like a conventional commercial risk.
The Hartford's approach reflects a broader pattern among specialty insurers positioning themselves inside innovation pipelines rather than waiting for emerging-technology companies to come to market seeking coverage. Shilpi Kumar, BL-EM's director of partnerships, said the arrangement benefits the incubator's founders directly.
"The Hartford's experience in risk management and insurance will provide valuable guidance to startups as they navigate the challenges of developing and scaling new technologies," Kumar said.
For brokers and MGAs working in the energy transition and advanced materials space, The Hartford's early positioning here is worth watching as a signal of which underwriting relationships and risk frameworks may already be forming around a wave of companies that haven't yet reached the point of needing traditional commercial placements.
