The University of Chicago and seven other leading Midwestern universities have launched Third Coast Foundry, a San Francisco–based innovation hub designed to strengthen the collective presence of Midwest research institutions in one of the world’s most active venture ecosystems.
The initiative creates a shared base in the Bay Area where the partner universities can support venture engagement and cross-institutional collaboration for university startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs.
Universities across the Midwest produce an enormous amount of talent and innovation. Together, the institutions participating in Third Coast Foundry represent nearly $10 billion in annual research investment and more than 300,000 students.
But founders outside the coasts often face challenges when raising early capital.
Located in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, steps from one of the largest concentrations of venture capital in the world and the city’s emerging AI corridor, the 3,500-square-foot workspace is designed to support a wide range of activities, from investor meetings and startup showcases to alumni gatherings and university-hosted events. The building also includes shared amenity space that can accommodate larger events and gatherings, allowing universities to organize demo days and other programming.
Third Coast Foundry is launching as a two-year pilot, allowing the universities to test the model and evaluate how the space supports founders and investor engagement.
The idea for it grew out of last year’s Deep Tech Demo Day in San Francisco, where startups from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presented to nearly 175 Bay Area investors.
The success of that event sparked a larger question: What if these universities collaborated to create a shared space where founders could meet investors and partners in person?
Third Coast Foundry pools resources to create a shared hub where investors can engage with a broad set of Midwestern founders at once. In addition to UChicago, Northwestern, and UIUC, the participating universities are Carnegie Mellon University, the Ohio State University, Purdue University, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Washington University in St. Louis.
“Our universities have deep research expertise, talented founders, and strong startup ecosystems. This shared San Francisco presence gives them another pathway to connect and grow,” says Samir Mayekar, adjunct assistant professor of entrepreneurship and managing director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago.
Third Coast Foundry’s official opening, on June 23, took place during a busy launch week of activities, including a ribbon cutting and the Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day, which brought 40 startups in front of Bay Area investors at the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation and drew more than 200 attendees, including founders, partners, sponsors, and investors.
The demo day, an evolution of last year’s, gave a preview of what the new San Francisco hub is designed to make possible—connections between Midwest founders and the investors and partners that they need to accelerate their growth.
“Third Coast Foundry was created to make these connections more consistent, more intentional, and more impactful,” says Mayekar. “These events show the strength of what our universities can do together—and the caliber of founders emerging from the Midwest.”