Federal officials on Wednesday toured the people and places behind Baltimore’s proposed regional tech hub during a site visit that could help the region secure future funding after missing out on the first round of funding.
Commerce Department officials toured Morgan State University’s artificial intelligence and biofuels labs, met with Baltimore manufacturing executives and heard how they are preparing high school students for the technology jobs of the future.
The visit was an effort to gauge the region’s ability to boost U.S. competitiveness in key industries, and was one stop on a months-long tour of all 31 cities or regions included in the Federal Tech Hub program. Baltimore was selected last October, allowing it to compete for $10 billion in federal funding over five years to position itself nationally and globally as a hub for artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
Despite the designation, the Baltimore region missed out on the first round of funding that could have been up to $70 million. The Commerce Department announced in July that tech hubs including Colorado, Indiana, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Montana were set to receive about $504 million in grants.
Since then, members of the Tech Hub Consortium, led by the Greater Baltimore Commission, have been preparing to win some of the funding that could be distributed next year. When Baltimore first applied for the program, it received more than 100 letters of support from consortium members, elected officials and private partners, and committed $800 million in investments.
In the next round of funding, Commerce officials will look for proposals that promote the country’s economic competitiveness and national security, Eric Smith, director of technology hubs at the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, said in an interview Wednesday.
“What we want to understand is what the path to economic competitiveness is. [and] “How are the economics of these particular industry focus areas going to work?” Smith said.
He said the Baltimore region has a “great foundation and ability to leverage existing assets to accelerate growth — “and we’ve seen that very much here.” But the region may need to more clearly define its strategy to grab a bigger share of the global market, he said.
“The assets are there, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to combine them and how to tell that story. [global] “The key piece in future rounds will be economic competitiveness,” he said.
Wednesday’s site visit was an opportunity for the 40-member consortium, which draws from sectors including business, economic development, manufacturing and academia, to showcase new and ongoing biotechnology and artificial intelligence efforts.
Ken Malone, co-founder and CEO of Early Charm, a company that created, owns and operates a business that commercializes new technologies, told Commerce officials that biomanufacturing is already based in the city. Early Charm opened a manufacturing plant in Baltimore a year ago and makes products such as 3D-printed plastics, metals, ceramics and bio-based parts, nanofiber filters, membranes and fabrics. It currently has 92 products in development, he said.
“We’re used to basically keeping something in town from the very early stages all the way through production and continuing to produce here,” Malone said.
Consortium members believe a new approach is needed to develop workforce potential in biotech, with the potential to connect 10,000 people in the region with meaningful jobs over a decade, said Kurt Schwab, president of Catalight Inc., a Baltimore-based software company that is developing artificial intelligence to use data points to find apprenticeship workers, for example.
“We have all the tech and biotech talent in Baltimore,” he says. “We don’t need to outsource the work.”
After touring labs at Morgan State University, officials were scheduled to visit 4MLK BioPark, the city’s largest private biopark investment, on Baltimore’s downtown west side, as well as Spark Coworking Space and the headquarters of Fearless Technology near the Inner Harbor.
Commerce Department officials began visiting the 31 locations in July to build relationships, Smith said.
“We really want to know what you’ve been up to,” Smith said during the morning roundtable. “This is a long-term relationship that we’re building with you. … We’re going to be working with you not just for a few months, but for years, hopefully decades.”
Five proposed projects in the Baltimore region would create a sustainable worker pipeline, establish cutting-edge biomanufacturing plants, and support entrepreneurship and innovation, and our next application will aim to fine-tune and strengthen the rationale for these projects.
The White House and Commerce Department are seeking $4 billion in funding for the next phase of the request, which could be split into multiple installments.
The Biden Administration’s efforts aim to invest in and revitalize the tech economy of overlooked communities across the country to help them become globally competitive in emerging technologies. The CHIPS and Science Act, enacted in August 2022, authorized investments in federal programs worth $10 billion over five years. So far, $541 million has been allocated to the program.
If the additional funding is allocated by the end of the year, a new application period would open in January, with funding potentially available to new applicants by next summer.
During the roundtable discussion, Maryland Commerce Secretary Kevin Anderson said what sets the region apart is that “we have the opportunity to build the most equitable and balanced ecosystem the nation and the world have ever seen.”
