Florida Council of 100 Expands Ambition Accelerated to Build a Coordinated Statewide Innovation Economy
The Florida Council of 100 and its Foundation have announced a major expansion of the Ambition Accelerated platform, extending it into new sector-focused accelerator tracks designed to strengthen Florida’s ability to attract, build, and scale the next generation of companies.
The initial launch was just this year in February 2026, Introduced at the Wall Street Journal Invest Live conference in West Palm Beach, the Ambition Accelerated platform was seeded with $10 million from business leaders Stephen M. Ross and Ken Griffin.
The expansion represents a strategic shift in how Florida approaches economic development, moving from efforts centered on company attraction to a more intentional, coordinated system designed to support company formation and long-term growth across the state.
A Shift From Growth to Coordination
Florida already operates as one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the United States, supported by strong population growth, diverse industries, and increasing capital inflows.
Ambition Accelerated is designed to build on that foundation by organizing Florida’s scale into a structured system that aligns regions, industries, capital, and leadership around a shared goal: creating an environment where companies can be built and scaled within the state.
Rather than functioning as a traditional accelerator, the platform operates as a connected market system. Participating companies are not entering a time-bound program; they are entering an ecosystem designed to provide direct access to customers, capital, and industry leadership from day one.
South Florida: The Gold Coast Innovation Engine
A central pillar of Ambition Accelerated is the continued expansion of the Gold Coast Tech track, which anchors Florida’s innovation strategy across South Florida, specifically spanning Miami to West Palm Beach.
This region is positioned as Florida’s financial and dual-use innovation corridor, with a focus on:
Fintech and financial services innovation
Dual-use technologies
Defense and national security-aligned solutions
The South Florida track builds on the region’s growing concentration of capital, enterprise headquarters, and high-growth startups, particularly Miami’s rapidly expanding global tech ecosystem and West Palm Beach’s emergence as a rising hub for business, capital, and innovation. Together, these markets are being intentionally connected to form a unified, high-functioning innovation zone where companies can access both capital and enterprise demand at scale.
This expansion builds directly on the success of the Gold Coast Tech Accelerator, developed in partnership with eMerge Americas and Related Ross. That initiative focused on fintech and dual-use and defense technologies and demonstrated Florida’s ability to support enterprise-ready companies as they scale within the state.
The program established a working model for integrating founders into Florida’s economic ecosystem, connecting them directly with customers, investors, and industry leaders in a more coordinated way than traditional accelerator structures. South Florida has played a central role in that model, serving as a proving ground for how capital, enterprise demand, and startup activity can be aligned within a single regional innovation system.
A Coordinated Statewide Platform for Economic Competitiveness
Ambition Accelerated expands into a coordinated statewide platform with multiple sector-focused accelerator tracks running concurrently across Florida, designed to align regional strengths with the state’s long-term economic priorities.
The initiative reflects a deliberate shift away from incremental program expansion toward a more integrated system for economic development—one that connects capital, industry, and regional innovation hubs into a unified growth engine.
The platform includes three primary tracks:
Tampa Bay (Fall 2026), anchored at Embarc Collective, focuses on healthcare innovation, including healthcare delivery systems, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health technologies.
Southwest Florida (Fall 2026), anchored at Babcock Ranch, focuses on infrastructure resilience, water systems, energy innovation, and climate adaptation technologies, positioning resilience as a scalable economic sector for the state.
Gold Coast Tech (ongoing expansion), anchored across Miami and West Palm Beach, continues to focus on fintech, dual-use, and defense technology, reinforcing South Florida’s role as one of the state’s most active and strategically important innovation corridors.
All tracks are designed to operate concurrently, creating a statewide network of sector-specific ecosystems aligned around Florida’s priority industries and enabling companies to engage directly with customers, capital, and industry leadership within each regional market.
Leadership behind the initiative emphasizes that this structure is intended to move beyond traditional economic development approaches by creating a more coordinated and intentional system.
“Florida has the underlying strengths to compete at a much higher level, but realizing that potential requires coordination,” saidGeorge LeMieux, Chairman of the Florida Council of 100. “This effort brings together business leadership, industry, and regional assets in a way that is aligned and intentional.”
The platform is driven by the Council’s membership, which includes CEOs from many of Florida’s leading employers, ensuring alignment with real market demand and the needs of companies actively building and scaling.
“What we are seeing across Florida is not incremental growth, but a shift in where and how companies are choosing to build,” said Eric Silagy, Chair of the Florida Council of 100 Foundation. “When you combine capital, infrastructure, and leadership at scale, you create the conditions for companies to grow with speed and certainty.”
This approach reflects a broader transition in Florida’s economic trajectory, from growth driven largely by population inflows, business relocation, and capital expansion, to a more intentional system designed to structure and sustain that momentum.
“For a long time, Florida benefited from growth,” said Mike Simas, President and CEO of the Florida Council of 100. “What we are doing now is building that growth intentionally, aligning capital, talent, and industry to create the kind of environment where companies don’t just come, they choose to build and stay.”
The initiative follows continued engagement across Florida’s innovation ecosystem, including major convenings such as eMerge Americas, where global leaders in technology, healthcare, finance, and emerging industries are shaping the future of high-growth sectors.
Building a New Model for State-Level Competitiveness
Supported by a growing network of statewide partners, including Embarc Collective and eMerge Americas, Ambition Accelerated will soon open a global call for applications targeting companies building solutions aligned with Florida’s priority industries and enterprise demand.
A global call for applications will open in the coming months, targeting companies developing solutions aligned with Florida’s priority industries and enterprise demand.
More broadly, Ambition Accelerated reflects an evolution in how states compete for economic leadership. Rather than relying solely on incentives or relocation strategies, Florida is building a coordinated system designed to support the full lifecycle of company formation, growth, and scale.
In doing so, the state is positioning itself not only as a destination for business, but as an environment where the next generation of American companies can be built, scaled, and sustained, with South Florida playing a central role in that evolution.
