Partner Content
The Dayton-founded technology association has spent nearly three decades building a community where technology leaders trade hard-won answers. Now it is widening its reach, starting with a renamed AI conference next August and a sold-out one behind it.
Startups + VC
Dexa was picked for TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 200 and pitches at Disrupt in San Francisco next month. Most of the cohort sells software. Dexa builds aircraft, holds an FAA air carrier certificate and flies commercial deliveries out of Dayton.
Startups + VC
The 10-week program pairs emerging dual-use companies with defense buyers, mentors and investors, running from mid-September through mid-November and closing with a Demo Day. At least three of the 10 selected companies are Ohio-based, two with roots at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Ten leadership moves across Ohio's investment, health care and technology sectors, including a general counsel for The O.H.I.O. Fund, a new chief executive at Proformex and a managing director building ventures at Cincinnati Children's Innovation Ventures.
Columbus
The Columbus digital commerce consultancy spent four years scaling inside COhatch's Polaris and Westerville locations. Now roughly 225 people strong and a two-time Inc. 5000 honoree, Aries has taken its own suite at Easton Town Center, steps from the retail clients it serves.
Capital + Deals
Two family-founded stamping companies, one in St. Marys and one in Brooklyn Heights, join a Cleveland-based platform that already ran six plants and $300 million in revenue. The capital comes through private funds advised by The O.H.I.O. Fund rather than its own balance sheet.
Artificial Intelligence
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is the first participant in the Airports AI Alliance's Open Innovation Programme, working with Columbia University researchers and INRIX to model vehicle movement across a campus the size of a small city.
Startups + VC
JumpStart's two-day gathering brings founders, investors and corporate leaders to the Huntington Convention Center for panels on agentic AI, industrial innovation and connected health.
Spotlights
The Findlay managed service provider launched days before 9/11, when national carriers were skipping over northwest Ohio and the community decided to build its own network. Twenty-five years and six or seven reinventions later, it runs cybersecurity out of a former Defense Department bunker.
Healthcare
The Cleveland company's ARWell PRO beat entries from 42 countries at this year's Games for Change Festival. CEO Lindsay Watson, a physical therapist of 25 years, built it around a problem she kept running into: most patients never do their home exercises.
Startups + VC
The Cincinnati company measures what ChatGPT, Claude and other answer engines say about roughly 100 brands, and co-founder Pete Blackshaw says market share no longer predicts what the models recommend. New capital will fund an industry-by-industry expansion.
Startups + VC
Alex “Fro” Frommeyer’s Columbus startup is betting that fixed employer allowances, employee-owned plans, and local care-navigation tools can give small businesses an alternative to escalating health-plan renewals.