Latest news with #Startup302
Technical.ly
02-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Delaware leaders address homegrown clean energy at in-person Town Hall
It's been a big month for clean tech in Delaware. There was the CleanTech Innovation Ecosystem Summit at the Delaware Innovation Space, including Startup302's Environmental Impact Finals, and the topic of clean energy took center stage (if only for a few minutes) at the Delaware town wall featuring the state's congressional delegation, the governor and the attorney general. Also new: big biotech expansions in New Castle County, the First State's first esports high school state championships and a Tech Council of Delaware fly-in to DC. Keep reading to get the details, and don't forget about next week's Philly Tech Week presented by Comcast and the Builders Conference. Hop on SEPTA to get there while you still can! A plea for more energy infrastructure On Saturday, April 26, Delawareans had an opportunity to speak directly to state leadership at the first in-person town hall of the second Trump administration. All of Delaware's congressional leaders — Rep. Sarah McBride, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Sen. Chris Coons — were present, as well as Gov. Matt Meyer and Attorney General Kathy Jennings. Community members pressed the all-Democrat panel on several topics, dominated by opposition to the Trump administration and demands for more aggressive action in Congress, as well as protest against the US role in the ongoing Gaza war. Clean energy also came up, as a union boilermaker from New Castle made a plea for more energy infrastructure in Delaware. 'Our nation is on the brink of an electric energy crisis because of the enormous amount of electricity demands needed to power data centers, AI, Bitcoin mining and cannabis farming,' he said. 'What distinguishes Delaware is the fact that our state imports more of its electricity generation, percentage wise, than any other state in the union, and we must change that.' Senator Coons responded, referencing the $750 million grant for the Mid Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, also known as MACH2, that connects Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as a center of the burgeoning hydrogen economy. Unfortunately, he said, the grant, approved by the previous administration, may not materialize. 'The current administration is this close to canceling that,' Coons said. 'I know this isn't universally known, but Newark, Delaware happens to be one of the world's leading centers of hydrogen technology. We have a real opportunity here to grow a business, to produce clean energy, to export it to the rest of the world, and I'm fighting hard, working with Democrats and Republicans to prevent the shutdown of our hydrogen hub.' Governor Meyer added that the state is working on a plan to make the state both energy independent and run on clean energy. 'Within a decade, we [plan to] go to 100% renewable Delaware produced energy,' Meyer said. 'It will not be easy to achieve.' A major roadblock, the governor said, is gaining regulatory support for the beleaguered offshore wind projects that have been in the works for years. 'There is outright opposition to many of these things from the federal government,' Meyer said. 'In spite of that, we're going to do everything with solar, potentially with wind, hopefully with hydrogen, and maybe even with a little nuclear to make sure we are moving forward.' Watch the full town hall here. More Moves: Merk's $1 billion complex at Chestnut Run will be the main production plant for cancer drug Keytruda. Biotech clinical research organization QPS Holdings is making a $16.6 million expansion at Delaware Technology Park in Newark. Futures First Gaming — and the State of Delaware — hit an esports milestone last month when it hosted the first-ever Delaware Scholastic Esports League Mario Kart High School State Championships at Theatre N. Cleantech startup KiposTech took the top prize in the 2025 Startup302 Environmental Impact Finals, held during the CleanTech Innovation Ecosystem Summit at the Delaware Innovation Space on April 24. The Tech Council of Delaware returned to DC for the 2025 Technology Councils of North America Fly-in, and got some face time with Sen. McBride. TechForum's AIinDE event returns May 14 at Theatre N in Wilmington with the theme 'How Local Businesses Are Leveraging Artificial Intelligence,' featuring four speakers from Delaware's tech community. May the 4th be with you! If you're spending this Star Wars Day weekend in Rehoboth, Taco Reho will have themed specials, including Vader's Taders topped with 'darkside salsa.'
Technical.ly
16-04-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Delaware's fintech moment: CAFE's 2025 spring cohort and more on the horizon
Delaware is having its fintech moment. Since the Center for Advancing Financial Equity — better known as CAFE — launched in 2023 at the then-new Fintech Innovation Hub at the University of Delaware's STAR Campus, it has quietly been building a name for itself. It's also been building a fintech brand for Delaware, something that has long seemed elusive despite the state being a major financial center since the 1980s. Even with prominent fintech companies like Delaware-based Best Egg, FairSquare and a PayPal presence, there was a certain kind of buzz that didn't seem to resonate beyond state lines. That may be changing. For its current spring cohort, CAFE held a three-day event from April 8 to 10 that drew fintech insiders, leaders and investors from all over the country to Delaware, including the Fintech Innovation Hub, sponsor Best Egg's North Wilmington headquarters, and, finally, the DuPont Country Club for an invite-only pitch and networking event that included the fintech portion of the Delaware Prosperity Partnership's Startup302 competition. 'I have really found a tremendous welcoming here in Delaware, so much so that I've adopted the Blue Hens as my own,' said Phil Goldfeder, president of the American Fintech Council, one of the many big names in fintech who came for the event. Speakers included Wilmington Mayor (and former Delaware Governor) John Carney; Ben du Pont, cofounder of Chartline Capital Partners and Zip Code Wilmington; Rob Habgood, CEO of Wilmington-based FairSquare/Ally Card; and CAFE founder Kristen Castell. CAFE startups from California, New York and Arizona made their pitches In the past CAFE cohorts, Delaware startups, including NESTER and Carvertise, participated among others from all over the country. This cohort's six CAFE startups are all established startups from out of state. Some are looking to do business in Delaware, but all are getting an exposure to Delaware's tech ecosystem to take home with them. The spring CAFE cohort is comprised of AI underwriting platform DubPrime (Los Gatos, California), smart estate planning platform Goodtrust (Palo Alto, California), ATM alternative Spare (Los Angeles, California), expense reduction platform Starlight (Brooklyn, New York), client management system TAZI AI (San Francisco, California) and predictive credit platform Trackstar AI (Chandler, Arizona). All six gave 5-minute pitches to cap off the event. Three Startup302 fintech finalist startups pitched early in the day, competing for part of $100,000+ in cash grants, mentoring and investor connections. Those startups are Roam, an Everett, Washington-based HOA management platform (first place), Wilmington-based Grad Village, a platform that connects college students with private donors to help them with tuition costs (second place) and Innocuous AI, a New York City-based data management platform (third place). There will be two more Startup302 finals competitions at upcoming exosystem events: environmental impact startups will pitch at the Clean Tech Ecosystem Summit on April 24, and life sciences startups will pitch at Delaware's DNA Life Science Conference on May 8. These events will feature finalists from Wilmington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. A spotlight on Delaware's talent Delaware's history as a finance and business center was held up as a major component of the state's brand identity, with Mayor Carney telling the story of how Wilmington became a center of banking for out-of-towners from places like San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles. 'When Ben's father [Pete du Pont] was governor, our economy here in our state was in really bad shape,' Carney said. 'One of the things that the administration did around 1980 was they passed important legislation called the Financial Center Development Act.' What it did, he explained, was bring a big New York bank to Delaware to set up its credit card operations, which was then followed by many others. Later, as banks consolidated, Bank of America bought MBNA, which had turned part of downtown to its own corporate campus. 'There was a lot of talent here looking for things to do,' Carney said, 'and that's where our Fintech sector came from.' That history continues to be apparent in the state's talent pool, said Habgood. 'What really drove the success of Fairsquare was being here in Delaware,' he told the attendees. 'Just finding ourselves in Delaware was a huge benefit because there's clearly more talent in the credit card space in this Wilmington area than anywhere else on the planet.'
