Eight Midwest Universities Open Innovation Hub in Downtown San Francisco

Mayor Daniel Lurie and leaders from eight major Midwest research universities cut the ribbon on the Third Coast Foundry, a shared innovation space in downtown San Francisco designed to connect university research with Bay Area capital and talent. The partnership represents more than 350,000 students and $10 billion in annual research spending — and a bet that the next generation of breakthrough companies will be born from the collision of academic research and Silicon Valley's venture ecosystem.

• Eight research universities launch permanent San Francisco hub to commercialize Midwest research and scale startups
• Mayor Lurie frames Foundry as cornerstone of his push to rebuild downtown into a vibrant 24/7 neighborhood
• University leaders make the case that Midwest institutions already built Waymo, YouTube, PayPal, and Oracle — now they want a formal pipeline
• Nearly half of top physical AI companies are PhD founder-led, underscoring the commercial value of university research

The Third Coast Foundry — a collaborative space backed by Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State, Purdue, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Washington University in St. Louis — officially opened its doors in downtown San Francisco on June 23.