Chicago has been known for a lot of things over the years, but there is one common thread about Chicago: innovation. What started as an early settlement has transformed into a transportation hub in the early 1800s. The Great Chicago Fire devastated the city in 1871, but not for long—from the ashes sprouted a diversity of minds that drives the innovation and collaborative spirit of the city.
Chicago holds deep connections to commerce, transportation, and manufacturing, and more recently, healthcare and communications. In its past, present, and most definitely its future, Chicago’s economic diversity plays a large part in what problems it sets out to solve.
Most recently, the city has also become a technological stronghold. With a large pool of emerging talent and its many universities, Chicago knows AI, and the technology’s application of late is even helping in the war on COVID-19. For all of the city’s innovations thus far, perhaps the best is yet to come.
Product Pioneering
In the early days, Chicago was known for being rowdy, perhaps to its advantage. That grit became the force that birthed enterprising individuals who, with ideas and hard work, came up with some of the most innovative discoveries used today. Case in point—the cell phone. It was the homegrown Chicago old-school tech-giant Motorola that created the first cell phone in 1973, and then brought the concept to market 10 years later. Remarkable, yes, but then Motorola introduced the radio to automobiles decades earlier, in 1930, a device still offered in nearly every new car sold.
$50 million investment is being made by Pivotal Ventures, headed by Melinda Gates in the Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities Initiative to set up hubs in 3 U.S. cities in the next 5 years, starting in Chicago.
And the light-emitting diode, better-known as the LED? The energy-saving light was invented near Chicago in 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr., a University of Illinois professor. LEDs may be small, but their impact is colossal. Despite a robust economy, from 2014 through 2019 Americans consumed less electricity each year, due in large measure to LEDs replacing energy-hungry incandescent bulbs, a stunning reversal of trends. Moreover, LEDs today are used in any number of gadgets, including the smartphones and mobile tablets essential to modern living.
There’s more. Chicago also claims such pioneer products as the vacuum-cleaner, the remote TV control, the dishwasher, and residential air-conditioning. Probably every Chicagoan can relay the true tale of the world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, completed in 1885 at 10 stories high, thanks to a steel frame that was a novelty at the time.
More than a century later, it was at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 1993 that the first popular web-browser, Mosaic, was developed and then released, helping to define the internet as a user-friendly space for sharing unlimited amounts of information instantly. Mosaic was licensed by Microsoft, and re-named Internet Explorer in 1995. Chicago’s tech-reputation may not garner headlines, but it does obtain results—and Microsoft is again looking to Chicago. looking to Chicago.
Leading the Way through COVID-19
Software giant Microsoft, along with artificial intelligence shop C3.ai, wants to apply AI to solving or mitigating the threat of the COVID-19 global pandemic. And where does Microsoft turn? In large part, to Chicago.
The University of Chicago, and the nearby University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are key members of a consortium armed with $367 million of industry-funding to abate COVID-19 and “advance the knowledge, science and technologies for mitigating the impact of future pandemics.” Four other top universities, spread from coast-to-coast, are in the Microsoft-led group but only the greater Chicago-area has two schools in the new pandemic-fighting AI effort. Surprising to outsiders perhaps, but not to the AI-crowd in Chicago—more on that later.
Others are looking to Chicago, too. In late March, the FDA approved emergency use of a molecular test, developed by Chicago-based Abbott Labs, to diagnose COVID-19 in a matter of minutes, a process that can take days or even weeks otherwise. The swab-sample test is diagnosed by Abbot Labs’ mobile, seven-pound ID NOW device, meaning deployment can be nearly universal. While the Abbott Lab’s virus-tester is a modern miracle, in some ways it fits the mold of Chicago innovations that have vast commercial and industrial applications.
Just one of innumerable advanced-technology projects in Chicago is the federal Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, led by Argonne National Laboratory and dedicated to advancing battery science and technology, especially storage. The U.S. Department of Energy plans finding of $120 million over a five-year period, and the University of Chicago is a partner. The goal is to advance the use of batteries in grid-scale renewable-power systems, to mitigate the issues of intermittent wind and sun power. Wherever one looks in the tech-world, it seems that the road leads back to Chicago.
$164 million has been raised by Chicago tech and startup companies in January of 2020
Chicago’s Tech Infrastructure
Part of Chicago’s long-standing success in leading technological advancement is the region’s tech-infrastructure of universities, local, state and federal agencies, and R&D-heavy corporations. At the federal level, in addition to the national super-computing labs at Argonne and the University of Illinois, there is the Fermilab in the Chicago suburbs and the USDA National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, though located in Peoria, is still within Chicago’s orbit.
In addition to the University of Chicago, and the Illinois University at Chicago, there is also Illinois Tech, Northwestern University, and Loyola University, all in Chicago, representing a gathering of academic tech research capability to rival any other U.S. metropolis. Notably, of all 50 states, Illinois is second in producing college computer-science graduates.
Nor are the universities resting on their laurels. The Illinois University system has created Discovery Partners Institute, slated to open a hub in Chicago in 2021. The purpose of the institute is to “bring together university and industry innovators, as well as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.”
$2.186 billion in VC funding in 2019
Then there is the Chicagoland private-sector, giants from all walks of commerce, including such titans as Abbvie, Baxter, and Abbott in biotechnology; Motorola Solutions, CDW, and Anixter in IT-communications; ConAgra and Mondelez International in foods; John Deere and Caterpillar in manufacturing; and too many others to mention. In addition, there are literally dozens of incubators, accelerators, and public-private partnerships sprinkled across the Chicago region, ascataloged by the Illinois Science & Technology Commission.
With all the right pieces in place, there is yet another thing Chicago tech community has going for it—a collaborative spirit. The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) and TechNexus and 1871 Consulting are evidence that they’re all in this together, no matter which sector tech hopes to advance.
Looking Forward to AI and VC
Past is prologue, and due to an enviable constellation of academic institutions, government agencies and, most importantly, private-sector cutting-edge wizards, Chicago will continue to play a star role in technological advancements of the future.
One of Chicago’s many competitive advantages is that it is the antithesis of a one-industry town. While the finance, software or entertainment industries may dominate other regions, greater Chicagoland remains a robust mix of enterprises from a wide array of industries, from food to finance, from transportation and logistics to healthcare. This diversity creates many opportunities for cutting-edge, cross-industry fertilization. The environment is ripe for introducing technologies like AI into Chicago’s many industries.
Chicago is naturally spawning cottage industries of AI outfits, pursuing the advancement of AI in every aspect of business from sales and marketing to manufacturing control and waste reduction. Such AI shops as Ascent, Uptake, iManage Narrative Science, Civis Analytics, Seismic, Strong Analytics, and dozens more dot the city. One gets a sense of Chicago’s AI scale by noting that LinkedIn alone lists nearly 1,000 AI job-openings in the city.
Not surprisingly given the local talent pool, there are more than 30 recognized venture-capital funds in the Chicago area, reported Walker Sands, including perhaps the granddaddy of the local VC industry, Pritzker Group Venture Capital. For example, the Chicago VC fund Lightbank was an early and key backer of Tempus, a Chicago start-up advancing precision medicine through AI in healthcare. Tempus uses AI and genomic-sequencing technology in the fight against cancer, and after a $100 million mid-March financing round was valued at $5 billion.
As it has for decades in other fields, Chicago has somewhat labored outside the national limelight when it comes to high-tech advancements. But the fact remains that Chicago is as much a leader in research and applied technologies as any other region, thanks in part to a long legacy of commerce, education, and the progressive private sector. And however illustrious is the past of Chicago, it will likely pale in comparison to the city’s tech-centric accomplishments of the future.
