Built in Ohio: Inside the 2026 Ohio Tech Summit

More than 800 founders, technology executives, and professionals filled the Ohio Union at Ohio State University on Thursday for the fifth annual Ohio Tech Summit, OhioX's flagship event and a sold-out day on applied AI, capital formation, and Ohio's growing role in the national tech economy. A waitlist of more than 100 people couldn't get in the door.

That demand reflects a five-year trajectory. The first Ohio Tech Summit, held in Cleveland in April 2022, drew 242 attendees and sold out. Every year since has sold out too. Wednesday's event drew 827 — more than triple year one — with the speaker roster and program reach expanding alongside it. Attendees came from every region and market of Ohio, more than 15 states, and at least two other countries, with travelers in from Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and Denver.

Presented by Verizon, the Summit has become the room where Ohio's tech sector takes stock of where it is and where it's going.

"Five years ago, we wanted to build the room we wished existed," said Chris Berry, President and CEO of OhioX. "There is amazing technology and innovation being built in Ohio. We want to give a stage to the people, companies, and ideas putting Ohio innovation on the map."

A state built for the applied AI era

The morning opened with Mark Kvamme of The O.H.I.O. Fund making the case that Ohio is positioned to lead the applied AI era. The next phase of AI, Kvamme argued, is about software meeting hardware, manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure — all areas where Ohio holds long-standing structural advantages.

He shared the Fund's recent investment in Dublin-based EASE Logistics as a concrete example of the thesis in motion: a fast-growing, eight-time Inc. 5000 freight and logistics company partnering with Columbus AI startup Jakib.ai to build a proprietary agent that will reshape how EASE runs internally and serves customers. The framing carried into a panel on re-industrialization in the AI era, where speakers traced how the state's manufacturing base is becoming a competitive asset rather than a legacy burden.

The "Applied AI in the Heartland" panel brought together Aud Jucaitis of First Mutual Holding Company, Kip Lee of University Hospitals, Grant Schneider of Upstart, Beena Sukumaran of Miami University, and Molly Kocour Boyle of Google. Each speaker described where AI is moving from pilot to production inside their organizations, with examples spanning banking, healthcare, lending, education, and infrastructure.

Chetan Kandhari of Nationwide closed the morning with a keynote on the enterprise AI shift, walking through the progression from traditional analytics to generative tools to agentic systems. The companies seeing real returns, Kandhari said, are the ones with the discipline to identify what works and scale it across the business — not the ones running the most pilots.

Capital, founders, and the Midwest advantage

The lunch session turned to the people writing the checks and building the companies. Ratmir Timashev took the stage for a fireside chat on OH.io, the initiative he launched in February with a $100 million personal investment.

The OH.io model embeds sales and go-to-market teams inside global B2B software and AI startups — fully funded by OH.io, in exchange for revenue share rather than equity. The team has already completed a roadshow through Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, and London, with a stated goal of bringing 100 companies and 2,000 new tech jobs to Columbus within five years. On Thursday, Timashev announced his company has signed a cybersecurity firm from Switzerland to their growing roster.

Breakouts and the innovation showcase

Breakout sessions ran throughout the day, with tracks on enterprise technology, startups, talent and workforce, and go-to-market strategies. Tonjia Coverdale served as emcee, threading the sessions together and keeping the day moving.

The day closed with a "Built in Ohio" innovation showcase featuring Ohio companies operating at very different ends of the applied AI stack. Dan Manges, co-founder of Columbus-based RWX, demoed the company's new container builder — work the team has framed as the biggest leap in container build technology since Docker's BuildKit engine.

RWX's bet is that the same dependency graph powering its CI system can build Docker images up to 10x faster, a problem that sounds esoteric until you remember that every modern software shipping workflow runs through it. Manges is a Columbus repeat founder — formerly CTO at Braintree (acquired by PayPal for $800 million) and a co-founder of Root Insurance (IPO) — and RWX is the kind of developer infrastructure company usually launched out of San Francisco or New York. He's building it in Ohio instead.

Aaron Chow, co-founder and CEO of Vixiv, took the stage next with a demo of the company's generative design tools, which use AI to compress months of engineering work into seconds. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Chow is building Vixiv as evidence that breakthrough hardware and software innovation can be done in Ohio — not in spite of the state, but because of the manufacturing and engineering depth around it.

Beth Flippo, CEO of Dayton-based Dexa, closed the showcase with a demo of the company's drone delivery technology, including its recent partnership with Grubhub on New Jersey's first commercial drone-powered food delivery program. Dexa is one of only four U.S. companies that both manufactures and operates FAA Part 135–certified delivery drones — autonomous aviation, built in the city where powered flight began.

The moment that ended the day wasn't planned. With her husband traveling, Flippo had brought her 10-year-old daughter, Amy, to the Summit. When it came time to roll the Dexa video on stage, she brought Amy up beside her and told the room exactly why she was there: building a company is hard, building the future is hard, and in the chaos of fundraising and deadlines, it's easy to forget who you're doing it for. The applause that followed was the loudest of the day.

"We are not building technology for the sake of innovation alone," Flippo wrote afterward. "We are building it to create a better future for them tomorrow… And I cannot imagine a better place to do that than Ohio. Where flight first changed the world."

By the closing reception, the picture across the room was consistent: the Summit has grown beyond a conference into a working session for the people building Ohio's tech economy in real time.

The 2026 Ohio Tech Summit was presented by Verizon and produced by OhioX, the statewide technology trade association whose members range from Fortune 50 companies to Ohio's most promising startups, alongside universities, hospitals, tech small businesses, and research organizations. The 2027 Ohio Tech Summit is scheduled for Thursday, May 13.