The mid-Atlantic fell short of receiving millions of funds from a federal program to boost investments in technology and workforces across the country.
The Economic Development Administration (EDA) on Tuesday announced the second round of funding for its Tech Hubs program. Baltimore and Philadelphia missed out this time, too.
However, EDA officials and consortium leaders remain optimistic about the program’s future and its impact on US innovation and manufacturing.
“We know that these dollars have an outsized impact. The 31 tech hubs have already realized more than $6 billion in leveraged actual investments outside of the federal investments,” Cristina Killingsworth, acting assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, told reporters.
“By investing in the people, places and potential of America, the Tech Hubs program has the potential to transform local economies while securing economic and national security,” she added.
Six designated tech hubs will receive $210 million in total this round. The EDA is already working with the chosen projects to implement funds, Killingsworth said at a press conference. The latest recipients include the Birmingham Biotechnology Hub in Alabama, the American Aerospace Materials Manufacturing Tech Hub in Washington and Idaho, and the Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub in Maine.
Congress identified $500 million for the program as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2025, which President Joe Biden signed in December.
This year’s NDAA provides $895.2 billion in funding for Department of Defense and Department of Energy national security programs. It’s also used to support government contracts in other sectors, like technology and life sciences.
The funds’ inclusion within that legislation is intentional, Killingsworth said.
“Congress’ latest support speaks to the program’s broad-based bipartisan support and potential impact,” Killingsworth said. “The inclusion of tech hubs in the NDAA also reaffirms Tech Hubs as a national security program.”
This is the EDA’s second round of funding for the Tech Hubs program. The EDA, an agency within the Department of Commerce, designated 31 tech hubs in 2023 as part of a $10 billion allocation in the CHIPS and Science Act.
Over the summer, Congress only appropriated $541 million to 12 of the hubs, not including Baltimore or Philadelphia. That money, combined with the NDAA funds, only makes up about 10% of the total $10 billion intended for the Tech Hubs program.
All designees who didn’t receive capital in the first round were up for it this time. Baltimore and Philly both received $500,000 consortium accelerator awards last year to continue administrative work, as did the other non-winning hubs.
A senior administration official who declined to speak on the record said there will not be additional funding similar to those grants because the funds are intended to cover two years of financial support.
EDA officials toured both regions in the fall as a country-wide tour of all designated Tech Hubs. Philadelphia’s consortium put together an $80 million proposal to advance precision medicine research, workforce and manufacturing in the region. Baltimore’s $70 million bid focuses on boosting biomanufacturing and biotech capabilities, building up investor networks for entrepreneurs and revamping job training in the region.
Bid leaders remained optimistic through EDA tours, feedback
Both Philadelphia and Baltimore’s tech hub proposals detail plans to advance the life sciences industry in their regions.
Philadelphia’s tech hub, PROPEL: the National Center for Precision Medicine, put together a proposal to advance biomanufacturing infrastructure, create a strong workforce development pipeline, provide resources to local startups, and advance commercialization and access to precision medicines.
Despite not being chosen for phase two funding, the consortium leaders were committed and optimistic about the project’s future.
When the EDA visited Philadelphia last fall, Tech Hubs program director Eric Smith, told Technical.ly the consortium should focus on refining its vision, emphasizing collaboration and providing more specifics in its proposal.
The consortium is working on developing that “crisper” focus and showing off its engagement with the private sector, said Tony Green, chief scientific officer for Ben Franklin Technology Partners. Its members are also exploring funding opportunities from other agencies and organizations.
“The work’s important,” Green previously told Technical.ly. “It needs to happen and where we get that funding, what’s the messaging we need to put together to attract that funding is going to be critical.”
Key to Baltimore’s $70 million proposal is increasing biomanufacturing, and in turn, creating workforce and education pathways in that field and other life sciences. It’s also focused on making the region more of a hub for startups by helping founders commercialize innovations and creating more investment opportunities.
Consortium bid leaders in Baltimore showed off the region’s innovation prowess to the EDA in late August. Officials toured the University of Maryland BioPark’s nearly open 4MLK building, the innovation labs at Morgan State University and the coworking space Spark.
Mark Anthony Thomas, the president and CEO of the consortium-leading Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC), told Technical.ly at the time that he was hopeful Baltimore would eventually receive Tech Hubs funds.
“Baltimore is postured,” Thomas told Technical.ly. “This is different. We have a lot of alignment that was not in place before.”
Program director Smith told reporters at the site visit that Baltimore’s biotech and biomanufacturing are “critical” to US competitiveness, which makes for a strong bid.
“What we’re looking for for the next round of funding is, again, going to be these projects that we’re able to fund that really accelerate growth,” Smith said at the time. “To not just invent new technologies, but really mature them and deploy them out into the world.”
A piece of feedback from that site visit was that some of the partnerships and programs within the region were new or still being established, per Lakey Boyd, the GBC’s chief economic officer.
Congress’ latest support speaks to the program’s broad-based bipartisan support and potential impact.
Cristina Killingsworth, EDA
She cited state-backed TEDCO’s Equitech Fund, which focuses on startups building workforce development programs and infrastructure, as an example.
“The feedback is, ‘The ideas that you put together, the evidence of the capacity to do it, are solid and impressive,’” Boyd told Technical.ly in the days before the latest funding announcement. “The partnerships and the collaborations that would have to occur across some of the elements, those were new. … We have continued to have those partnerships so we have more examples of evidence that we are doing that well.”
More federal supports for job growth
The EDA also announced another round of recipients of its Good Jobs Challenge, which funds workforce development programming by region.
Both Philadelphia and Baltimore received funding from a previous round of the program’s grants.
Philadelphia Works received $22.7 million in 2022, which it distributed to three local organizations for workforce development programs. The Skills Initiative (formerly West Philadelphia Skills Initiative) offered healthcare and life sciences training, while the Philadelphia Energy Authority focused on clean energy training and the Philadelphia Area Labor Management Committee led infrastructure training.
Maryland’s Department of Labor received $22.9 million for offshore wind that same year. It created a partnership between local unions to build an apprenticeship program for people to work in the offshore wind industry. This sector has not escaped local critique, though: Eastern Shore residents have pushed back against one project off the Delmarva Peninsula, citing possible negative economic and environmental impacts, though Maryland pushed its permit through in November.
Tech Hubs’ uncertain future under Trump
Despite this momentum, uncertainty remains with a new presidential administration coming in.
Days before the election, President-elect Donald Trump noted his dislike for the CHIPS and Science Act, which enabled the EDA’s Tech Hubs Program.
However, the program has proven bipartisan support, said the EDA’s Killingsworth. She said in December that she is hopeful the program will live on.
A senior EDA official who was not authorized to speak on the record said during a recent press conference that they’ve been in touch with the incoming administration about the agency’s programming, but do not specifically know how the Tech Hubs program will continue.
Consortium leaders are also optimistic about the program’s future.
“We are well aware of the public comments about the [CHIPS and Science Act],” Green from Ben Franklin said. “But we are also aware this bill had and continues to have bipartisan support and we have confidence it will survive. As such, we are working on the assumption new funding will be available.”
Boyd, the GBC’s chief economic officer, noted the bipartisan support she’s seen for the Tech Hubs program, and noted the significant return on investment in designated regions.
“It has been implemented and hit the ground in a wide variety of types of communities in different regions of the country,” Boyd said before the announcement. “I think what’s really important is that it has produced jobs and it has produced additional investment.”
Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
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