Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant will advance mobility

Last Friday, the vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and president and CEO of TechTown Detroit, Ned Staebler, joined a Zoom call with President Joe Biden and the U.S. Economic Development Agency where they announced that the Detroit Regional Partnership and a regional coalition of partners secured a $52.2 million advanced mobility grant from the Build Back Better Regional Challenge. The coalition was selected out of 60 finalists nationwide and won one of the largest grants out of 21 funded projects. It will advance the state’s mobility and electrification leadership and build on Michigan’s economic momentum. TechTown Detroit is one of the five co-recipients for the grant.

What does this mean for Detroit?

For Detroit, this means a boost to the city’s efforts to remain the Global Epicenter of Mobility as we transition to a new electrified, autonomous and connected reality. For TechTown, it means about $3.5 million over the next three to four years to run a software accelerator, pilot technologies in neighborhoods around Detroit, and coordinate the efforts of the Mobility Accelerator Innovation Network (MAIN). MAIN is a hardware and software accelerator that focuses on serving and capitalizing on technology startups from the idea stage through commercial scale with an overall budget of about $12.4 million. The local partners for MAIN include Centrepolis Accelerator at Lawrence Tech, Design Core Detroit at the College for Creative Studies, Endeavor Detroit, Global Detroit, Invest Detroit, Michigan Founders Fund, University of Michigan and Wayne State University, with TechTown serving as the coordinating partner.

Learn more

You can learn more about this grant which will create and connect a robust, comprehensive startup ecosystem, fundamentally changing the game for early-stage companies in the mobility space in Detroit at techtowndet.org/BBBRC.