• Technical.ly analyzed national data and on-the-ground reporting to name a US “ecosystem of the year” for 2025.
• Pittsburgh stands out for turning federal industrial policy, AI and robotics strengths into concrete projects, companies and inclusive pathways.
• Other strong performers included Austin, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Columbus, Chattanooga, Bozeman and North Dakota.
If you care about place-based economic development, 2025 was a strange year to feel optimistic.
“The year has been this big soul-searching in America,” said Victor Hwang, the founder-CEO of pro-entrepreneurship advocacy group Right to Start and a co-host on Builders Live, Technical.ly’s monthly podcast on national trends in local ecosystem building. “What actually drives American prosperity and then how do we keep it?”
We still have historically high levels of new business formation. The past three months were even higher than the pandemic boom.
In this month’s Builders Live I got input on Technical.ly’s first-ever “ecosystem of the year,” anointing one region that made the most progress in centering entrepreneurship in its economic strategies, while navigating and reflecting the trends of 2025. Here, we’ll name our pick.
The year was certainly distinctive. Trends include AI infrastructure buildout; federal investments in regional tech and science coalitions; and elevated entrepreneurship rates.
We still have historically high levels of new business formation — the past three months were even higher than the pandemic boom. That tells a two-part story: More Americans are starting side hustles to earn extra cash.
“The siloes in our economies are a real problem,” said investor and Builders Live co-host Brian Brackeen. “You have two people, next-door neighbors, one struggling, one having the best year of their life.”
Along with spurring social and political volatility, the Trump administration advanced the country’s resurgent industrial policy, or the use of federal dollars to advance particular sectors. The EDA Tech Hubs program and the National Science Foundation’s NSF Engines program are the most prominent, putting half a billion dollars toward dozens of regional coalitions charged with advancing a key science, often with an ecosystem approach.
Famously, certain industries are booming. In 2025, the AI infrastructure buildout, including prominent data centers, accounted for 1.5% of GDP, making it the third largest infrastructure buildout in American history, behind only a peak in railroads and highway construction. Healthcare is still hiring. But most others are still in a post-pandemic hangover: Unemployment rates were higher for recent computer science graduates than those with philosophy degrees.
“In difficult times, it’s especially interesting to see who and where are still getting the work done,” said Rae’Mah Henderson, a Techstars leader and another Builders Live co-host.
How we think about ‘ecosystem of the year’
Technical.ly updated this week our Innovation Ecosystems Map with new state-by-state data, supplemented with editorial snapshots of nearly 100 regional strategies. By our count, this is the single most comprehensive analysis of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the United States.
Our newsroom spent the year speaking to organizers across the country, and the last few weeks analyzing data — helped by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s new ARIE report. All this informs our choice for what ecosystem had the best 2025.
Technical.ly Innovation Ecosystems Map
Alongside the data, what are the qualitative criteria of a great ecosystem approach?
Top must meet bottom, says Hwang: policymakers and institutional leaders on one end, and small-group grassroots organizers and program providers for entrepreneurs on the other. Both need to be in the same conversation. Place-making matters too, Henderson argues: not just glossy branding, but housing costs, shared spaces and investments in quality of life that make it feel like “a place to build.” Brackeen adds that even amid familiar local turf wars, successful ecosystems have enough of an identity that any one founder or group’s success is viewed as good for the whole. Venture capital counts might be a signal of success but not a requirement, especially as we consider differently sized and type ecosystems.
So for this first pass at “ecosystem of the year,” I looked for regions that:
- Showed signals in the data of entrepreneurship success, growth and access
- Turned industrial policy and federal wins into real projects, not just press conferences
- Advanced AI, data and frontier tech in ways that include workers and smaller firms
- Showed visible coalition-building between grassroots builders and institutional leaders
- And made measurable progress in 2025, not just coasting on a decade-old reputation
Several places fit that description.
Short list: Ecosystems that had a very good 2025
By no means comprehensive, nor a ranking, what regions stood out to Hwang, Brackeen, Henderson and me, without making it to the top of my list?
Among big regions, Texas’s much-modeled Austin continued its reputation for blending economic sensibility, as housing supply bid down housing costs even as its entrepreneurship ecosystem competed among the top tier. Austin joined San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Atlanta as large regions that performed especially well on that Nasdaq ARIE report on entrepreneurship gains.
My hometown Philadelphia deservedly cheered a surprise placement among the top 15 global startup ecosystems for the first time, largely on the strength of decades of work in biotech, cell and gene therapy, plus a spate of software unicorns.
All good, but not with the most forward momentum. Many mid-sized regions had good years too.
Indianapolis stood out. Governed with a pro-entrepreneurship state policy, Indianapolis hosted the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, bringing global ecosystem leaders back to the US for the first time since the series was launched in the wake of the Great Recession. The state passed a Right to Start Act that created an Office of Entrepreneurship, and a governor with entrepreneurial experience made new business formation a top public priority. That’s exactly the “top meets bottom” alignment Hwang talks about.
Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans no longer fits neatly into “recovery” narratives. In the Nasdaq ARIE analysis, the region showed up as a high-performing, inclusive ecosystem relative to its size. Pair that with work by statewide Nexus Louisiana and the FUEL NSF Engine, plus emerging climate, health and creative-tech clusters, and 2025 felt like the year national observers began to see what locals have been building.
Economic development powerhouse Ohio’s biggest city is Columbus, which was also among the top performers in the Nasdaq ARIE report, cited for strong entrepreneurship and inclusive outcomes, not just big check sizes. Layer in its logistics and fintech strengths, plus the mega-commitments around chips and advanced manufacturing on its fringe, and Columbus is a case study in how a midwestern capital can use industrial policy and startup density together.
Similarly inspiring, but with limited messaging outside of those ecosystems existing fans.
Smaller regions outperformed their size.
Henderson singled out Chattanooga, which is notable for its mobility focus across industries and company type. The city of fewer than 200,000 has leaders interested in place-making and business growth, vibrant public spaces, strong civic identity and early investment in municipal broadband.
That industrial policy and federal funding has elevated other smaller places.
Montana’s tiny Bozeman doesn’t look like a global player on a population map, but the Headwaters Tech Hub designation put a national spotlight on its photonics and advanced manufacturing capabilities. In 2025, the real story was coalition-building around that hub — linking university research, outdoor recreation entrepreneurs, remote tech workers and rural communities. That’s an ecosystem at the edge of the map taking itself seriously.
Others, like North Dakota’s NSF AgTech Engine, put tribal communities and rural regions at the center of the future of agriculture technology, not just passive recipients. It’s still early, but the intent is clear: this is a rural and tribal ecosystem trying to design itself around shared prosperity.
All of these ecosystems deserve credit. But if I have to pick one region that best represents where US entrepreneurship is headed — and what “using 2025 well” looks like — my choice is Pittsburgh.
Why Pittsburgh is Technical.ly’s ecosystem of the year
Pittsburgh is Technical.ly’s pick for 2025 ecosystem of the year. Start with the part everyone sees: the companies.
- Duolingo continued to grow into one of the world’s defining edtech firms, leaning into AI-powered learning (and controversy around it) while keeping its headquarters and major talent base in Pittsburgh.
- Gecko Robotics graduated from attention-grabbing industrial robots to serious defense and infrastructure contracts, hitting unicorn status, scaling its predictive maintenance platform and deepening its local footprint, further reinforcing Pittsburgh’s robotics legacy.
- Astrobotic kept pushing toward the moon. Despite setbacks in early lunar missions, the company secured additional NASA commitments and advanced its Griffin lander plans, keeping Pittsburgh unusually close to the center of commercial space work.
- Aurora announced an expansion of its hotly-anticipated pilot of fully autonomous freight, dispatching driverless trucks in Texas.
Language learning, industrial robots and lunar landers are an odd trio until you recognize what they represent together: a robotics-and-software-heavy, deeply technical economy that is no longer just “post-steel.”
But the real reasons Pittsburgh stands out this year are more structural: industrial policy, translated into ecosystem practice.
Biden-era policy, from Build Back Better to Tech Hubs and NSF Engines, mostly survived into the Trump administration, albeit with new rhetoric. That’s one of the two big economic stories of 2025.
Pittsburgh is one of the cleanest real-world testbeds for what that means. The region has been deploying its Build Back Better Regional Challenge award not as a single shiny project, but as a portfolio under the New Economy Collaborative banner — to which Technical.ly proudly contributed.
The other big economic story of 2025 was AI and the physical footprint it drives: data centers, power demand, new infrastructure. Pittsburgh isn’t new to that conversation. Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and a dense cluster of robotics and autonomy firms have made the region a global robotics and AI node for years. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, short-listed as a potential presidential contender, made announcements on AI infrastructure across the state, with Pittsburgh expected to play an outsized role.
What felt different this year was how intentionally that cluster was being woven into a broader, more inclusive ecosystem story. In Nasdaq’s ARIE analysis, Pittsburgh didn’t just score well on entrepreneurship metrics; it also ranked high on measures tied to opportunity and support, especially for underrepresented founders and workers.
The Pittsburgh Robotics Network’s Discovery Day, timed with Pittsburgh Tech Week, has modeled how federal and institutional funding can be used to demonstrate local organizing.
What other ecosystems can learn from Pittsburgh’s 2025
No place has “won.” Every region you care about will need to show up again next year. If anything, getting this kind of recognition should raise expectations, not lower them.
But Pittsburgh’s 2025 offers some lessons:
- Treat industrial policy as a catalyst, not a prize. Federal dollars are meaningful mostly to the extent that they help founders, workers and communities do more together.
- Center companies and workers, not just institutions. Duolingo, Gecko and Astrobotic are different in almost every way, but together they make an honest argument about what the region actually builds.
- Make inclusion a core strategy, not a subcommittee. The best robotics and AI hubs will be the ones that can point to real opportunity pathways for people who weren’t already inside the lab.
- Align regional identity with state strategy. In a policy environment where governors and legislatures control so many levers, being a “state flagship” for innovation matters.
- Use general-interest “mega events” to center entrepreneurship. Traditional civic and economic development leaders demonstrate their priorities by what they give top billing. In 2026, we’ll see how Pittsburgh handles its hosting of the NFL Draft.
We’ll keep refining this exercise. Next year’s “ecosystem of the year” will draw on even more data from Technical.ly’s Innovation Ecosystems Map and more reporting in new markets.
For 2025, though, I’m comfortable planting a flag: Pittsburgh used this year as well as any ecosystem in the country.
