Alchemist Chicago Names 30 Semifinalists for Its Second Cohort

By Grace Kim

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation has named 30 semifinalists for the second cohort of its Alchemist Chicago program. The announcement, made by the University of Chicago's entrepreneurship hub, doubles down on a program that screened its first class just one cycle ago.

Thirty startups made the cut. That's the headline number, and it's the whole story in one figure: the Polsky Center reviewed a field of applicants and advanced 30 of them to the semifinal stage of cohort two.

What is Alchemist Chicago?

Alchemist Chicago is an accelerator run by the Polsky Center, the entrepreneurship and innovation arm of the University of Chicago. The program works with early-stage founders — a mix of student-led and Chicago-area ventures — and moves them through a staged selection process. Cohort one ran first; this is cohort two.

The structure is straightforward. Startups apply, a review panel trims the field, and semifinalists advance toward a final cohort selection. Thirty ventures now sit in that middle slot.

Why does a second cohort matter?

A second cohort means the first one worked well enough to repeat. Accelerators live or die on pipeline: if cohort one had drawn weak applicants or weak outcomes, there would be no round two this fast.

For the 30 semifinalists, the stakes are concrete:

• A slot in the final cohort of Alchemist Chicago
• Access to the Polsky Center's resources and network at the University of Chicago
• A path through one of the city's most closely watched university-linked accelerator programs

What comes next?

The semifinalists now face the final selection round. The Polsky Center will trim the 30 down to a final cohort, and those founders will enter the program proper — with the backing, mentorship and University of Chicago infrastructure that the accelerator packages together.

Chicago's startup scene has leaned hard on university-linked programs to keep founder talent in the city rather than losing it to the coasts. The Polsky Center's decision to run a second Alchemist Chicago cohort, at the same 30-semifinalist scale, signals that demand from local founders is holding steady.

Watch the final cohort announcement: who makes the cut from the 30 will tell you where the Polsky Center sees the strongest early-stage bets in Chicago right now.