3 days ago
Can Boston's innovation scene get its mojo back? The Globe's 2025 Tech Power Players say yes.
But the local tech scene has more than a chance to regain its buzz. And the road back to prominence goes through what investors say is the only area in technology that matters right now: artificial intelligence.
How — and how quickly — the
Boston, however, has an advantage, one captured by the
Globe'
s Tech Power Players, our annual list of the most consequential leaders in the region's innovation economy. In a word, it's diversity — an exceptional combination of academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and industries, ranging from software to clean energy to health care.
Advertisement
This diversity provides the talent and opportunity to not only advance foundational AI models that learn from vast troves of data, but also to develop applications that spread the benefits of AI to businesses and consumers — in ways that affect lives. Thanks to key leaders in the scene, that development is underway.
Advertisement
PathAI, a Boston company that has raised more than $250 million in VC funding, has trained AI models to help pathologists diagnose disease and pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments while improving laboratory workflows; the firm is led by physician-scientist-turned-CEO Andy Beck. Familiar Machines & Magic of Woburn,
Boston firm
Motional's IONIQ 5 robotaxi parked along the Boston Harbor.
Motional
The state's biggest industries, meanwhile, are looking to AI — and local tech firms — to make them more efficient, effective, and competitive. Boston Medical Center, for example, is experimenting with AI tools to schedule operating rooms, translate medical records into different languages, and take notes during doctor-patient conversations, allowing doctors to focus on care.
'When you put together health care with all the innovation in Boston,' says Joy Brown, BMC's chief digital information officer, 'you have the opportunity to change health care.'
When it comes to emerging technologies, the race often goes to the early, not just the swift. The question is whether Boston, which famously missed the personal computer wave and the interactive, social internet known as Web 2.0 (so long, Facebook!), is embracing AI too late.
The
Advertisement
The Bay Area accounted for 33 of the 50 companies on
Mikey Shulman, CEO and cofounder of Suno, in the company's Cambridge office.
Barry Chin/Globe Staff
'It's time for Boston to reinvent itself,' says Adrian Mendoza, founder and general partner of the Boston VC firm Mendoza Ventures. 'We've got to create an AI hub here.'
Mendoza and others in the tech community say the state should support AI on the scale of the vaunted biotech initiative, which was launched in 2008 and solidified Boston and Cambridge as the premier life sciences cluster.
Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, says the key is creating compelling opportunities for local university graduates to stay here rather than take their smarts, ambitions, and startups to Silicon Valley and other places. One way to attract and keep talent here, she says, would be to provide startups low- or no-cost access to the massive — and expensive — computing power needed to build and train AI models.
Most important, Rus says, the state needs to go big. 'The moment is now,' she says, 'not 10 years from now.'
Rus is among those who say the
Advertisement
Sabrina Mansur, executive director of the Massachusetts AI Hub, the Healey administration's AI initiative, says the $100 million will be a catalyst to encourage partnerships between companies, industries, universities, and government. Massachusetts, she adds, can offer more than just money to AI entrepreneurs; the state presents the opportunity to work with industries such as robotics, clean energy, and biotech.
'This is where you come to change the world,' Mansur says.
Just look at the region's clean energy and sustainability sectors, which have some of the world's leading companies. Form Energy, cofounded by MIT materials scientist
A computer rendering of a commercial-scale fusion power plant that Commonwealth Fusion Systems plans to build in Virginia, not far from Washington D.C.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Is all this enough to change the trajectory of the local tech sector? Employment in Boston-area startups declined more than 4 percent last year, according to San Francisco VC firm SignalFire, while venture investment in local information technology companies fell to the lowest level in six years, according to PitchBook.
Advertisement
But local techsters say the region still has the key ingredients: talent and money. Universities, teaching hospitals, and growing companies continue to fight to attract the best and the brightest while venture capital remains a robust industry. Only California and New York have bigger VC sectors than Massachusetts, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
What Boston needs to become a stronger innovation hub are more successful home-grown companies, along the lines of tech stars HubSpot ($32 billion stock market value), Toast ($25 billion market value), and Klaviyo ($10 billion market value), says Jeff Bussgang, cofounder and general partner of the Boston VC firm Flybridge.
What it will take are determined founders, smart investors, and, ultimately, the approach of Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers.
'We just gotta keep swinging hard,' says Bussgang, 'and connect on one or two pitches.'
Explore the list by sector
Rob Gavin can be reached at
