Portal Innovations and Altitude Lab Partner to Strengthen Utah’s Life Sciences Startup Ecosystem

Altitude Lab to serve as anchor member of Portal at Woodbine Labs, bringing accelerator programming and emerging life sciences companies into a new 30,000 square foot innovation hub in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Portal Innovations, a venture development platform supporting early-stage life sciences companies, today announced a strategic partnership with Altitude Lab to strengthen the resources available to life sciences entrepreneurs in Salt Lake City. Through the partnership, Altitude Lab will relocate its accelerator program and member start-ups to Portal at Woodbine Labs, serving as the facility’s anchor member.

The collaboration brings together Portal’s laboratory infrastructure, national network and venture development capabilities with Altitude Lab’s established techbio accelerator program and robust community of founders. Recursion, which helped launch Altitude Lab through the Recursion Charitable Foundation, continues to support innovation in Salt Lake City and welcomes Altitude Lab’s next chapter.

“Founders need infrastructure, expertise, capital and relationships to turn promising science into companies, and Altitude Lab has spent six years building a community with exactly that in mind,” said John Flavin, founder and CEO of Portal Innovations. “Bringing it into Portal at Woodbine Labs gives those founders a stronger foundation to build and grow their companies in Salt Lake City.”

Over the last six years, Altitude Lab has built a community of founders developing technologies with the potential to advance human health. Over 40 Altitude Lab companies have raised a combined $205M in financing.

“For the companies in our program, this changes what’s possible on day one,” said Kapil Sharma, Executive Director of Altitude Lab. “Starting in February 2027, our founders will work in purpose-built lab and office space at Woodbine Labs, our graduates will have grad suites to grow into, and all of them gain a direct line to an expanded network of investors and industry partners across the country. We built Altitude Lab to keep Utah’s best science in Utah, and this partnership gives that mission a permanent home.”

“Recursion was founded in Salt Lake City, and we have always believed that building a great company also means helping build the ecosystem around it,” said Najat Khan, CEO and president of Recursion. “We helped launch Altitude Lab to give more founders the infrastructure, community and connections to turn ambitious science into enduring companies. Six years later, seeing Altitude Lab enter this next chapter with Portal at Woodbine Labs is an important step in strengthening Utah as a place where life sciences companies can start, scale and stay.”

As part of the transition, Altitude Lab’s alumni companies will have the opportunity to relocate to Portal’s grad suites at Woodbine Labs. Portal, Altitude Lab and Recursion will work together on programming and industry engagement to support the partnership’s long-term sustainability.

“Salt Lake City is home to some of the most exciting science and technology anywhere, and this partnership gives homegrown life sciences companies more room to take root and grow right here,” said Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “By connecting founders with lab space, mentorship, investors, and one another, Altitude Lab and Portal are strengthening an innovation economy that creates good jobs, expands opportunity, and has the potential to improve lives far beyond our city.”

Portal at Woodbine Labs, which was announced earlier this year, is a planned 30,000-square-foot life sciences innovation hub in Salt Lake City with a scheduled opening of February 2027. The facility will provide laboratory and office space alongside the operational resources and industry connections that early-stage companies need to advance their science and build sustainable businesses.

To learn more about Portal at Woodbine Labs, visit: https://www.portalinnovations.com/woodbine-labs-powered-by-portal-salt-lake-city-utah/

About Portal Innovations

Portal Innovations is a venture development platform that helps early-stage science-driven companies translate discoveries into successful businesses. Through purpose-built laboratory and office space, venture support, and connections to capital, industry partners, and research institutions, Portal provides the resources founders need to build and scale their companies. Portal operates innovation hubs across the United States, connecting entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders to accelerate the commercialization of breakthrough science.

About Altitude Lab

Altitude Lab is a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit accelerator for early-stage techbio and life sciences companies, founded in 2020 with support from Recursion. Altitude Lab helps biotech founders move from idea to funded start-up in 24 months, through programming, capital network access, and expert advisory services. Over the past six years, Altitude Lab has launched 41 biotech companies who have raised a combined $205M in financing. Learn more at: altitudelab.org

About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a leading clinical-stage company pioneering AI-enabled drug discovery and development decoding biology to radically improve patient lives. Recursion is advancing a portfolio of differentiated investigational medicines across its wholly owned and partnered pipeline in oncology, rare disease, neuroscience, immunology, and other therapeutic areas with significant unmet need. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, an AI-native, end-to-end drug discovery and development platform integrating biology, chemistry, and clinical development into a unified intelligence system. Powered by proprietary multimodal data, purpose-built AI models, and bilingual teams fluent in both science and AI, the Recursion OS is designed to translate complex science into medicines that matter — faster, better, and at scale — for patients who are waiting.

Recursion’s platform infrastructure is anchored in Salt Lake City, Utah and Milton Park, Oxfordshire, where its automated biology and chemistry laboratories generate proprietary data at industrial scale. Recursion also maintains offices in New York, Montréal, and London, three global hubs for talent and leadership at the intersection of AI and scientific innovation. Learn more at www.recursion.com, or connect on X and LinkedIn.