Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

SSTI, a national nonprofit organization that offers information and services that are needed to succeed in today’s innovation economy, has released a new data tool that defines investment activity in each of 18 technology areas. That is one indicator of the vibrancy of a region’s innovation economy.

Comprising two interactive visuals and a downloadable data file, the tool includes the number of investment-backed companies, investment deals, and amount of capital invested by state, year (2013-June 2023), and investment stage (e.g., seed, angel, venture) for technology verticals that were selected to align with many of the key technology areas defined in the “CHIPS and Science Act” and included in the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) “Tech Hubs” program.

Viewers can select the metric that the data tool’s visualizations will use to represent investment activity – number of angel, seed, early, or later stage investment deals, number of companies receiving investment, or amount of capital invested. SSTI suggests that deal count may be the best single indicator, as it shows a breadth of activity without being subject to skewing from a single large investment. By clicking through to the final tier of the visualizations or by accessing the data file, users can see each of those three metrics by deal stage, year, state, and technology area.

The data tool can be a valuable instrument in determining quickly where a state’s strengths in investment activity area are. The tool may also be useful for those submitting proposals to the “Tech Hubs” and other funding programs.

Through SSTI’s Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Community of Practice, supported by EDA, all organizations can access the tool. The data used to develop the tool comes from Pitchbook and is published by SSTI with permission. See the Methodology and Notes section of the data tool for more information.

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