A recent baseline study conducted by research firm TEconomy Partners found that in the St. Louis region, geospatial technology accounted for over 27,000 jobs and nearly $5 billion in economic impact. That same study identified over 350 businesses and organizations working in the geospatial sector.

The St. Louis-based firm reported raising $18.1 million for the new Cultivation Capital Geospatial Tech Fund I LP, according to a recent  filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing states the fund’s first sale occurred May 7. The fund is listed as having a $50 million offering, but the regulatory filing says Cultivation Capital has reserved the right to increase the offering up to $100 million.

Cultivation Capital declined to comment on the new fund. Founded in 2012, the firm backs early stage technology, agtech and life sciences startups. Its portfolio includes about 150 companies.

The St. Louis region has focused in recent years on bolstering its geospatial sector, a move that comes as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) builds its new $1.7 billion western headquarters in north city. The STL GeoFutures Initiative in June 2020 published a reportdesigned to be a playbook to boost St. Louis as a “global center of geospatial excellence.”

No other city, he said, has gotten as much attention from his industry since the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency began building its new western headquarters here. And for good reason: The NGA has signaled that it will increasingly need private-sector help to perform its mission. The agency is opening its own Moonshot Labs at T-Rex, one floor below SpatialGIS’ office.

“St. Louis is now a mecca for the development of next-generation geographic information systems,” Faison told me. “There’s also the lure of T-Rex, of having an opportunity to come and network. It is hard to go anywhere and find a place so geospatially focused, even in Washington.”

St. Louis is sometimes called the City of Plans, the implication being that local leaders spend more time dreaming than acting.

That’s not the case with GeoFutures, a report that outlined how to make St. Louis a leading center for location data science, sometimes known as geospatial technology.  In the year since GeoFutures was published, a series of corporate and institutional moves have helped pull together capital, talent and other support for the rapidly growing industry.  Arch Grants has set aside funding for location-data entrepreneurs, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Missouri Technology Corp. have launched an accelerator program for geospatial startups. According to a securities filing, Cultivation Capital is raising a $50 million geospatial-focused venture capital fund.

Meanwhile, local educators have partnered with industry-leading employers to make sure they can find workers. Both the NGA and Colorado-based Maxar Technologies forged relationships with Harris-Stowe State University to build a talent pipeline.  Add to that a growing support network at the downtown T-Rex building, which has attracted the NGA’s Moonshot Labs and a University of Missouri St. Louis outpost devoted to geospatial technology. T-Rex has an entire floor devoted to geospatial firms.  To make sure the year-old industry roadmap gets implemented and updated, a formal GeoFutures Coalition will operate under the umbrella of Greater St. Louis Inc. It held its first meeting Wednesday.

“GeoFutures is not a plan that sits on the shelf,” said Jason Hall, Greater St. Louis Inc. chief executive. “The community is moving it down the football field at a very rapid rate.”

The GeoFutures report’s first strategic priority, for example, was talent development. It noted that “the St. Louis region has a largely untapped talent resource in its Black and disinvested communities which must be leveraged.”  Leidos’ partnership with Gateway Global is one effort to close that talent gap. The organization trains high school students and recent graduates in geospatial and other technology skills, and expects to place its first group in jobs or apprenticeships this fall.  Zekita Armstrong Asuquo, Gateway Global’s president, said her trainees typically wouldn’t have considered a technology career if not for the program. “Most of the students who come to us don’t even know the word ‘geospatial’ until they meet us,” she said. “The students are very capable, and we catch them before they end up working at Walmart.”

Another goal in the GeoFutures study was to position St. Louis as a center of thought leadership and innovation. A new academic program at St. Louis University should help with that, and the region’s profile will get a boost when GeoInt, the geospatial industry’s largest annual gathering, comes to town in October.  The event also is booked in St. Louis for 2023 and 2025, ensuring that industry leaders will get regular updates on the region’s progress.

For now, the GeoFutures effort still has plenty of unfinished business. Near the top of the list is the goal of spurring development near the NGA’s new north St. Louis campus. Task force members talk of possibly attracting federal funds for a research center that could be the geospatial equivalent of the Danforth Plant Science Center.  Regardless of whether that happens, Hall pledges that north St. Louis won’t be forgotten. “We can’t lose sight of the neighborhood into which NGA is moving,” he said. “We cannot leave behind the existing residents in that neighborhood.”

The new lab space will be part of a cooperation agreement between the university and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and will also be used to collaborate with corporations such as Maxar, a Colorado-based geospatial company that said this spring it would work with Harris-Stowe to recruit a diverse workforce.

Harris-Stowe's T-Rex office, called the GeoHornet Lab, will be adjacent to the NGA's Moonshot Labs, a collaboration space that is also scheduled to open this summer.

Harris-Stowe isn't the first university to locate a geospatial program at T-Rex: The University of Missouri-St. Louis announced last year that it was opening a Geospatial Innovation Center inside the downtown technology incubator.

Esri said Wednesday it has opened an outpost inside T-REX’s Geospatial Innovation Center, expanding its footprint in the St. Louis region. The geospatial giant also operates offices in St. Charles and the Cortex innovation district.

"The Geospatial Innovation Center at T-REX is the inspiring next step in St. Louis's transformation into a global center for geospatial ingenuity and development," said Tara Mott, St. Louis-based National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) account manager at Esri, in a statement. "Esri's presence in this space represents a great opportunity to work with the best and brightest geospatial minds in St. Louis. We're looking forward to joining the folks at T-REX to help up-and-coming developers shape the future of location intelligence technology.”

T-REX’s Geospatial Innovation Center, a 16,000-square-foot space on the incubator’s fourth floor, opened in 2020 and has more than two dozen geospatial companies operating there.

Mike Steinmann doesn't even have a contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, but the agency's commitment to St. Louis helped convince him to make a $10 million investment.

Steinmann, 38, is chief executive of HITS, a data management company that just announced it is building a new facility in Hazelwood. It will be the only private facility in the region that meets National Archives & Records Administration standards for storing records.
...............
In its pursuit of business from the NGA and its contractors, HITS has opened a small office downtown in the T-Rex building, a nerve center for the local geospatial industry.

According to the region's GeoFutures plan, that industry already employs more than 15,000 people and has a multiplier effect on the growth of firms that supply and support the location-data specialists. As construction begins at HITS in Hazelwood, we have an example of that multiplier effect in action.