The Midwest of the United States isn’t the only region between the coasts with a growing tech scene. Tech companies in Ontario’s Waterloo Region, a tech corridor in southeastern Canada near Toronto, set quarterly records this last month in August 2021 with a collective CDN$749.7 million in venture funding raised, a record for the region.
Rivian, the Michigan-based EV pickup startup, has just filed for an IPO hoping for a roughly $80 billion valuation. Rivian said in a statement Friday that the company has submitted S-1 registration to the SEC. The electric truck maker is aiming for an IPO around Thanksgiving of this year, but that timing will be determined by the SEC.
The Michigan Venture Capital Association has just announced a partnership with Fontinalis Partners to create a $104 million Fund 3 to invest in the next wave of mobility startups in the state of Michigan. This comes on the heels of multiple other news funds raised by venture capital firms around Michigan to continue the historic steep growth in investment in new tech companies around Michigan and the Midwest, which are now being hailed as some of the best cities in the nation for new startup growth and incubation.
It’s been a busier than usual year for startup funding around Michigan’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystems. While nearly half the VC-funded startups in the state are located in Ann Arbor, even as of 2017, Detroit boasted a 50% increase in the number of new startups based in the city and continues on a fast track as an emerging startup hub. Here are some headlines you may have missed as Ann Arbor and Detroit’s tech and startup scene continues to grow at a record-setting pace.
Ann Arbor is home to nearly half of all high-tech startup in the state of Michigan. What’s the state of Ann Arbor’s entrepreneurial ecosystem after a challenging year due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Algo, a leading innovator in end-to-end supply chain optimization software based in the Detroit suburbs, announced recently that it received a multi-million dollar investment from Plymouth Growth Partners, a growth equity firm based in Ann Arbor.
In June, Aeroseal, LLC, a climate tech company shrinking carbon emissions from residential and commercial buildings, announced it raised $22 million in funding. The Series A round was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) with participation from Energy Impact Partners and Building Ventures.
Chicago minted no fewer than 8 unicorn startups already in 2021, and the year is only half over, easily doubling last year’s count. Why is the Windy City suddenly a center of Midwest tech funding? The reasons are numerous why the Midwest, and Chicago in particular, is experiencing long overdue growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but the basics boil down to this:
Leading biotechnology company Amgen announced recently that it plans to invest $365 million to build a new manufacturing facility in New Albany, Ohio, which is located near new insurtech/healthtech hub Columbus. This move will create 400 new jobs. The facility will feature Amgen’s advanced assembly and product packaging capabilities for medicines to be distributed in the U.S.
Chicago’s rise as a tech hub is still accelerating. According to World Business Chicago, the rapid growth of the Midwest city as a producer of unicorns, or tech startups valued at over $1 billion, has only increased through 2021, with 8 new tech companies being minted as unicorns only halfway through the year, double last year’s count:
