Florida Tech Corridor Celebrates Success

The Florida High Tech Corridor’s impact on innovation is growing.

The Corridor is a 23-county region anchored by three research universities — the University of Florida in Gainesville, the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and the University of South Florida in Tampa. The organization focuses on supporting and connecting tech firms to foster business development.

“Its whole mission is to increase the innovation capacity of this 23-county region all the way from Tampa-St. Pete to the Space Coast,” said Paul Sohl, CEO of the Corridor. “So, we’re ecosystem builders where we look at things regionally. That’s what makes us unique — and we’re part of this larger quilt and network of unleashing innovation within this region.

”The Corridor’s last fiscal year from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, saw about a 20% bump in revenue from federal grants. It invested in even more research collaborations in the region and provided funding that helped businesses such as Silicone Assurance, a UF startup incubating at UF Innovate | Accelerate at The Hub.

Silicon Assurance is a hardware security company that looks at the designs of silicon chips to find bugs before they are manufactured.

Receiving funding from the Corridor has been helpful for the company, said Raj Gautam Dutta, co-founder and CEO of Silicon Assurance. The Corridor helped Gautam Dutta make contact with other companies in his industry and was with him every step of the way in submitting a proposal for funding.

“It was very helpful during the submission process and the review process,” he said.

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