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Across New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette and rural parishes, what once might have appeared as a series of isolated wins is increasingly showing signs of statewide cohesion.
New Orleans recently landed in the top 15 of a national innovation ecosystem ranking, and Louisiana’s Q1 2026 startup deal count tied its highest level since 2016. The expansion of accelerators, incubators, meetups and conferences, alongside efforts to create a clearer “front door” for entrepreneurship, suggest a maturing support network.
And the state is focusing on sectors where it has a credible edge, including energy, logistics, healthtech, AI and advanced industry. Investments in data centers, workforce training, ports and aerospace evidence efforts to tie entrepreneurship to long-term industrial growth.
We’ve got the details on how it’s all going down. Scroll to read recaps of some of our recent reporting, and click through to explore the full articles. To get more involved and connect, sign up for the Louisiana weekly newsletter and connect with Nexus Louisiana here.
New Orleans just got ranked a top 15 startup ecosystem — and now there’s work to be done
New Orleans was a surprise high-performer in the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s “Advancing Regional Innovation Ecosystems” report. Ranked No. 14 in the report’s analysis, it sits next to big players like San Francisco, Austin and Seattle, alongside Atlanta, Charlotte and Pittsburgh.
New Orleans entrepreneurs are especially capital efficient, the report said. It highlighted the effective strategy of pairing Tulane and other university output with the budding network of entrepreneur support organizations across the Gulf Coast and state.
Louisiana startup deal count ties highest level since 2016 despite Q1 2026 funding dip
“We are building the conditions — the funds, the institutions, the ties between universities and founders and investors — to allow homegrown companies to get their first check,” said Rob Lalka, a business professor and executive director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane University, “and then their second, and to stay here when they scale.”
Your guide to Louisiana startup accelerator and incubator programs
Louisiana has dedicated programs for entrepreneurs of every stripe, from the early-stage founders with a concept and a dream to the small business owner with high growth potential.
Search the list to get a feel for the variety available, with programs that offer resources like mentorship, funding help, office space, strategy and — not least — a community of fellow innovators with whom to learn and grow.
Looking for your people in Louisiana tech? Start with these meetups
“Knowing what places are safe to explore the limits of your knowledge, that’s what we are trying to make these groups for,” John Ezekiel, a software developer for Diamond Marine Services and the lead for the Acadiana Software Group, said during a panel on tech meetups during Innovate South in April.
“You can test it and not feel afraid to ask the questions you think might be basic,” he added at the founder-focused conference in Lafayette.
A 2026 guide to Louisiana gatherings for founders, builders, technologists and educators
New Orleans is an international convention hub with plenty of well-attended tech-specific offerings for the innovators who want to keep up with cutting-edge advancements and hang with people of their ilk.
But don’t count out the rest of Louisiana beyond the state’s biggest city. Places like Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Lafayette are all putting on such tech convention offerings, too.
Why Nexus Louisiana chose ‘startups’ over ‘entrepreneurship’
Nexus Louisiana’s 10-year goal: 1,000 net-new startups that are building technology, are candidates for venture capital or federal grants like NSF funding, and are capable of hiring and scaling. Research defends its focus: the “multiplier effects” of new firms that commercialize science and technology start the economic flywheel. Entrepreneurship is where an economy begins.
Everybody knows New Orleans. Entrepreneurship week is another reason.
“Our vision is for New Orleans to be an innovation hub, and we specifically say hub,” said Andrew J. Albert, programs director at nonprofit entrepreneurship champion The Idea Village, which founded New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week in 2009 and helped shape its evolution.
“We don’t suck energy from everywhere. New Orleans is one of the easiest places to get to, both in travel and in culture. We have always been a crossroads.”
Oil and gas companies are pumping up Louisiana software firms with millions in business
“There is something about the Louisiana culture that has a willingness to not just go the same way people have been doing things, and a willingness to solve a problem regardless of the rest of the stuff around it,” said Geoff Daily, chief revenue officer and part-owner of Bifrost, a Lafayette-based software company that specializes in bridging complex industrial data systems. “The word I invented a while back is Cajun-uity.”
That Louisiana-style ingenuity has helped make it a go-to source for energy companies in need of software services. In the last five years alone, major deals have taken place all over the state.
Codegig secures $2M for carbon tracking and tax-credit automation
Founded in 2015 and led by founder Kellen Francis, Codegig’s current push is on CodeGig Carbon, software to automate tasks like carbon-emissions tracking and tax-credit incentives for industrial customers. The platform uses machine learning to forecast emissions and can pair with real-time sensors to detect leaks or harmful chemicals.
Louisiana opens $20M rural healthtech fund for startups tackling care access gaps
Louisiana state leaders unveiled a program to fund healthcare innovation that addresses gaps in the state’s rural healthcare system.
Companies focused on matters like chronic disease, healthcare access, healthcare workforce shortages, telehealth and care coordination are encouraged to apply.
“This effort is about building sustainable healthcare systems that improve quality of care, quality of life for rural Louisianans,” Louisiana surgeon general Evelyn Griffin said during a press conference announcing the initiative.
LA Tech professor lands $185k NSF award to build AI tools for real-world infrastructure risks
“AI models often perform very well in controlled environments, but real-world systems constantly change,” Louisiana Tech professor Abdur Rahman said. “Equipment ages, operating conditions shift and environmental factors vary. Our goal is to develop AI systems that can adapt to those changes while remaining reliable and transparent for the people who depend on them.”
The project aims to develop AI models that adapt as real-world conditions evolve in complex, sensor-based systems.
Louisiana invests $5.9M to fast-track Port of Vinton expansion, grow rare earth mining
The new facility makes the Port of Vinton and Louisiana a source for rare earth mining that provides materials for making magnets used in things like electric cars and defense radar systems.
According to the press release for the project, the facility will be an important link in the nation’s advanced technology supply chain.
“Louisiana’s ability to operate at the speed of business has been a major advantage for this project,” Aclara US CFO Alonso Guzman said.
Louisiana’s aerospace legislation spree fuels SpaceX rumors around Vermilion Parish land deal
“We are saying Louisiana wants you, and we want to make sure that’s absolutely clear in law,” state Rep. Tony Bacala (R-Prairieville) said to Fox 8 of aerospace company owners.
The timing of Louisiana’s warm welcome to space exploration lines up with ongoing discussion on the purchase of thousands of acres in Vermilion Parish.
Meta’s $115M Baton Rouge academy reflects AI’s growing demand for skilled infrastructure labor
Called America’s Workforce Academy, Meta’s new program trains tradespeople in skills needed to build the physical infrastructure for AI development, according to a Meta press release. That includes fiber technicians, welders, plumbers, electricians and other trades.
Baton Rouge and Louisiana officials said Meta’s AI academy could be a resource for Louisianans who want to be on the right side of the present layoff/job opportunity divide being caused by corporations shifting to AI.
“We need people to get reskilled, upskilled, a different kind of skilled to position themselves to fill the jobs and make a good living,” Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois told WAFB.
Subterra founder Noah Deshotel tried the ‘big city.’ Here’s why he chose rural Louisiana instead.
Subterra is a promising young AI firm that, since its incorporation in 2024, has created hundreds of in-house trained software and AI products, customized for organizations and individuals across different industries.
The company is headquartered in Mansura, in Avoyelles Parish, a town of roughly 1,300 residents and roughly 70 miles north of Lafayette.
“We want to provide benefits to the state of Louisiana, to everyone around us,” founder Noah Deshotel said, “not necessarily taking the path most traveled and leaving.”
Louisiana factory pilots AI to improve safety and ease labor gap
Through a partnership with Louisiana Innovation, a division of Louisiana Economic Development, Houston-based Persona AI is bringing humanoid robots to SSE Steel Fabrication in St. Bernard Parish. The anthropomorphic bots will perform tasks like recognizing factory floor plans, welding sheets of metal and collecting data through motion capture.
However, the intent is not to replace people with robots.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to replace the person in the shop,” SSE chief operating officer Justin P. Airhart said. “The people are just going to learn different jobs, and it’s going to be a balance of what the human does versus what the robot does.”
Applied Digital plans $3.6B central Louisiana data center campus to train large AI models
“This project is going to create, when it’s done, 200 direct full-time jobs that pay approximately $90,000 a year,” Gov. Jeff Landry said. He added that the data center will diversify the regional economy and bring with it more opportunities for investment and growth.
Applied Digital board director Richard Nottenburg said the arrival of the data center will come with over $500 million in “direct benefit” to Rapides Parish. He said Applied Digital will turn to local businesses for resources when building the data center.
“This is a paradigm shift for Central Louisiana,” Nottenburg said. “It’s a totally transformational project that is going to have a very positive impact on the community.”
Here’s exactly where Amazon is planning its new data centers in Louisiana
Northern Louisiana is turning into data center central.
Across the state from Meta’s under-construction Hyperion megaproject, Amazon and STACK Infrastructure just announced a $12 billion investment in a new hyperscale complex on the west side of the state, near Shreveport.
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