Dear Friends and Supporters,
On behalf of mHUB we are excited to share our 2022 Annual Report with you. This last year was a pivotal one for our organization, marked by the accomplishment of some major milestones and a renewed five-year vision and strategy. It was also marked by the significant growth of our startup community since opening in 2017, which resulted in hitting a huge milestone in January of attracting over $1B in investment, followed by another $450M by the end of the year. In the same five-year period, the startup community exceeded the $1B mark in generated revenue, secured over 460 patents, and created over 5,000 jobs.
In 2022, mHUB took time as an organization to reflect on its mission and the accomplishments and learnings achieved in the first five years. We launched mHUB to change the trajectory of hardtech and physical product innovation and commercialization in Chicago. We are proud of the significant steps we have taken toward reaching the goal of developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem around physical products and hardware innovation and accelerating industry growth by cultivating a community of collaboration and connectivity between innovators, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers. Now, as we look forward to the future, mHUB has set another lofty mission and vision to extend our impact even further:
- mHUB Vision: Be the leading commercialization center advancing hardtech solutions that impact humanity.
- mHUB Mission: Enable U.S. hardtech innovation and commercialization by fueling collaboration and providing an accessible, hyper-resourced environment to develop, fund, and accelerate clean energy, health, sustainability, and manufacturing entrepreneurship.
To accomplish this, mHUB has defined an ambitious strategy that we believe will lead to more than doubling our economic impact over the next five years. We will look to further lower barriers of access to hardtech entrepreneurship, lead the way in commercializing emerging technologies, especially across clean energy, health, sustainability, and manufacturing verticals, and establish mHUB as an anchor institution in Chicago and the nation.
In support of these broadening goals, we founded the Catalyze Initiative, a program to drive equitable access to hardtech entrepreneurship, and have raised $2.45M toward a 5-year $8.6M goal through the generous support of partners including the Landis Family Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, We Rise Together, Bank of America, Christopher Family Foundation, and a federal congressionally directed spending appropriation. These funds have enabled mHUB to launch its first full-scale programs for underrepresented founders -- the mPOWER cohort programs for women-identifying founders and two hardtech fellowship programs for underrepresented engineers and entrepreneurs. In this next year, we look forward to working with our first Catalyze Initiative Business Support partner, West Side Forward, who received $100,000 from mHUB to launch an intensive business development program for hardtech entrepreneurs on the West Side anchored in Garfield Park.
In August 2022, we closed our first venture fund, the mHUB Product Impact Fund I, at $15.1M with 79 limited partners. To date, we have deployed this capital into 36 hardtech startups with solutions in smart and sustainable manufacturing, medical devices, and climate and energy technologies. These startups were selected from around the world to participate in mHUB’s accelerator program through a competitive application process and represent some of the most promising entrepreneurs and technologies that will solve critical problems facing our world. Through our fund and accelerator, we have made increasing access to capital for underrepresented founders a top priority and are proud to report that 47% percent of our portfolio companies have an underrepresented founder on their team. As we move into 2023, mHUB will initiate fundraising efforts to expand and scale our venture capital efforts to support early-stage hardtech innovators.
In the first half of 2022, mHUB continued to lead an effort for the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Build Back Better Regional Challenge. mHUB built a statewide effort, the Illinois Clean Tech Economy Coalition (CTEC), to scale up Illinois’ clean tech economy across energy infrastructure, grid modernization, and long-energy storage. CTEC was selected by the EDA as a national finalist and awarded $500K to develop an economic development strategy for scaling Illinois’ innovation and commercialization resources and expanding our workforce and manufacturing capacity. While CTEC was not awarded a Phase II grant, the coalition was successful in securing a State of Illinois appropriation of $25M in the 2023 budget to support CTEC capital projects and future federal grant-supported investments.
As we move forward into 2023, our organization is hyper-focused on solidifying our long-term headquarters and further increasing its resources and accessibility. We accomplished a significant step toward this goal last week with the announcement of our $50M investment in the acquisition and build-out of a historic manufacturing facility within Chicago’s Kinzie Industrial Corridor on the city’s Near West Side. mHUB’s renovation and relocation to this 2-acre site within a designated Opportunity Zone and planned manufacturing district will increase mHUB’s prototyping, office, and convening spaces and improve accessibility to mHUB’s resources and programming for underrepresented founders on Chicago's south and west sides.
We plan to host a ceremonial groundbreaking later this month, a celebratory sendoff BBQ at our current facility in July, and a grand opening event sometime this fall. We hope to see you at these events and look forward to welcoming you to our new home later this year.
Thank you all for your partnership and engagement as we collectively seek to spur consequential innovation and entrepreneurship that has the potential to impact humanity and grow U.S. manufacturing.
