Commerce selects six Tech Hubs winners for re-awarded funds

Six Tech Hubs will get a combined $169 million under Department of Commerce awards announced Monday, redistributing funds the agency clawed back from winners over a year ago.

The new awardees include projects in Virginia, Idaho, Illinois and Wyoming, among other states. The focuses of those hubs range from nuclear energy to forest bioproducts. Just two of the hubs — located in Maine and Missouri — again won after their previous awards were rescinded.

The award announcement from Commerce’s Economic Development Administration comes more than a year after a decision by the department to rescind over $200 million in Tech Hub awards that were made in the final days of the Biden administration, and hold a new competition. At the time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the previous process that led to those awards “rushed, opaque, and unfair.”  

But while that decision frustrated supporters, it also indicated that the bipartisan regional development program aimed at bolstering the technology economy across the country would continue after questions early in the Trump administration about its future. The new awards are confirmation of the program’s support. 

“I’m glad to see that the administration is committing to this model of investing in regional strategies to accelerate our leadership in key technologies,” Jason Rittenberg, principal at Excel Regional Solutions who is focused on regional development strategy, told FedScoop.

Mark Muro, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who co-authored a paper that’s considered to be a catalyst for what eventually became the Tech Hubs program, told FedScoop via email that the “new awards show that President Trump remains committed to what is in fact a bipartisan project of investing the vitality of U.S. regions.”

The awards also follow a National Science Foundation announcement last week for a similar program, Regional Innovation Engines. It named 12 engines across 20 states. Rittenberg said those programs are “arguably even more relevant” amid global changes, such as China’s continuing progress on technology advancement, active wars, and less open trade.  

While the Commerce and NSF programs have historically had bipartisan support, they’re up for reauthorization in fiscal 2027 and there “have been a lot of questions about what the task was going to be going forward,” Rittenberg said.

In statements included in the release, Commerce leaders framed the awards as a move to create jobs and advance technology in key industries. Lutnick said the president “remains firmly committed to strengthening American manufacturing” and U.S. job creation.

Ben Page, the EDA’s deputy assistant secretary for economic development and chief operating officer, said the program “empowers U.S. regions to emerge as global leaders in critical technologies over the next decade.”

Some old, some new

The two previously awarded hubs that received awards Monday are the Critical Minerals and Materials for Advanced Energy Tech Hub in Missouri, which is receiving $38 million, and the Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub in Maine, which is receiving $20 million. 

As for the four new winners: The Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Tech Hub in Virginia will receive $16 million; the Bloch Quantum Tech Hub in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin will receive $30 million; the Intermountain-West Nuclear Energy Corridor Tech Hub in Idaho and Wyoming will receive $31 million; and the Kansas City BioSecure Manufacturing Tech Hub in Kansas and Missouri will receive $34 million. 

Interestingly, $51 million of the possible $220 million for the competition remained unused in the awards. Meanwhile, both previous winners had different funding amounts this time around. Under the previously announced awards, the Missouri project was to receive $29 million, while the Maine project would have received $22 million. 

The EDA did not immediately respond to a FedScoop request for comment about plans for the remaining funds or changed amounts for the two re-awarded Tech Hubs. 

On Monday evening, lawmakers representing hubs that received funding trumpeted the awards.

“The future of American nuclear energy is being developed in Idaho,” Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said in a press release. “Today’s investment by the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Intermountain-West Nuclear Energy Consortium Tech Hub capitalizes on Idaho’s deep nuclear history and will expand opportunities for the West to maintain this strong reputation.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said the funding would “help cement the Commonwealth’s position as a national leader in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing while creating good-paying jobs in the Petersburg region, strengthening our economy, reducing our reliance on foreign supply chains, and protecting our national security. 

But the new awards also mean some Tech Hubs did not get previously promised funding, and, for the two programs that are again being awarded, the money has been delayed by over a year.

“They probably would have loved to have been working for the past year-and-a-half, so I’m sure there’s a little bit of disappointment, perhaps, that they’re only able to just now [get] started,” Rittenberg said.

The hubs that were previously announced as winners and didn’t receive funding Monday are: the American Aerospace Materials Manufacturing Tech Hub in Washington and Idaho; the Birmingham Biotechnology Hub in Alabama; Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub in Oregon; and the Vermont Gallium Nitride Tech Hub. 

FedScoop has reached out to those hubs, as well as several lawmakers representing those states, for comment.