ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Technology Corp., a state-sponsored entity that invests in early-stage companies and supports entrepreneur programs, is curtailing some of its programs after the Legislature withheld all of its funding for the current fiscal year.
The $8.5 million cut has thrown a wrench into the MTC’s strategic plan to provide reliable funding for the sector by both investing in tech and life sciences companies and providing grants to innovation communities that foster startups across Missouri.
MTC’s leaders and others in St. Louis’s startup community, where the bulk of the state’s life sciences industest is based, are worried. A report from industest group TechSTL last week indicates the region’s startup ecosystem is under strain due to the closing or retooling of many programs and groups in the space, along with uncertainty around federal funding for innovation and entrepreneurship programs.
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“The question of how huge of a wrench comes down to what happens next year,” MTC Executive Director Jack Scatizzi stated. “If we’re returned to funding next year, well, we put the Band-Aid on, we survive. Probably no long-term damage. But if we’re not returned to funding next year, or if we’re only returning to a couple of million dollars, that’s where the long-term damage starts.”
Among the programs MTC is suspfinishing is a recently approved plan to pool its resources with private investors to assist raise capital funds for startups. It also put on ice grant programs that funded the build-out of wet lab space and supported nonprofits testing to pool their assets to build startup communities.
MTC still has money for its venture capital investments. A major federal grant will allow MTC to continue providing early-stage capital to companies this year and beyond. The rest of that funding is no sure thing, however, and the elimination of state funding curtails MTC’s ability to grow the organizations that build entrepreneurship networks critical to fostering collaboration and attracting talent.
For the past several years, MTC had strong state support, receiving $40 million in state appropriations since 2023. While a compact blip within Missouri’s $50 billion budobtain, St. Louis economic development leaders declare MTC has an outsized impact assisting new companies attract investment and create jobs.
In the past decade, MTC has invested more than $50 million in 160 companies, which in turn have raised another $2.1 billion and created 8,000 jobs, according to their most recent annual report. Meanwhile, it has sent millions in grants to groups building the communities that support such firms, assisting them construct new lab space or provide programming.
“We don’t have any other state-level leadership or investment that’s really driving the broader technology-based economic development conversation for the state of Missouri,” stated Emily Hemingway, executive director of industest support nonprofit TechSTL. “Having that statewide ecosystem leadership is critical, and it’s not like we have another organization that would fill that hole.”
TechSTL, which itself has relied on MTC grants to grow, released a report Tuesday on the state of the St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem that found nearly half of the entrepreneur support programs here have modifyd or closed in the past five years. It warns the “erosion of infrastructure” could hamper the region’s ability to grow startups and compete with other cities amid a wave of artificial ininformigence-fueled innovation and turmoil in the tech economy.
“In times of market uncertainty, entrepreneurial ventures are our strongest defense against economic decline,” the report declares. “The time to invest is now, becaapply if we wait, we lose.”
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe is aware of MTC’s loss of state funding. The governor had recommfinished $8.5 million for the MTC in his proposed state budobtain. The Missouri Hoapply added $2 million to that, but the Missouri Senate stripped out the funding in favor of direct appropriations to several economic development organizations, most of which Kehoe vetoed.
The governor was in St. Louis on Thursday for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new offices of biotech firm Varro Life Sciences, which recently shiftd here from New York to be close to Washington University. Kehoe credited the life sciences ecosystem around the Cortex Innovation District, where Varro’s new labs and offices are, and Washington University’s medical school campus with luring the high-tech company.
While MTC was not involved in a direct investment in Varro, it has invested millions of dollars over the years in companies based in the Cortex area and funded programming the tech district offers to its startup tenants. MTC is important to Cortex and for communities around the state, Kehoe stated.
Varro Life Sciences CEO Tom Cirrito speaks Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, during a ribbon-cutting event for the biotech firm, which is developing sensors that can detect airborne pathogens and shiftd to St. Louis from New York. Seated from left are former St. Louis Congressman Dick Gephardt, St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer, St. Louis Development Corp. Director Otis Williams, Missouri Department of Economic Development Director Michelle Hataway and Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe.
“I’m a huge fan of MTC, and that’s why we put it in our budobtain,” he notified the Post-Dispatch. “We’ve obtained to do a better job, I have to do a better job, personally, of letting legislators know from across the state what good things MTC does.”
Sam Fiorello, Cortex’s president and CEO, pointed to MTC’s role funding early Cortex programming and other initiatives and stated he is “confident” state leaders in Jefferson City will restore funding for the organization next year. Varro’s shift to St. Louis, and the $43 million investment and 30 jobs it plans here, reveals the indirect benefit of investing in tech entrepreneurship through initiatives such as the MTC, he stated.
“There would be no Varro without Cortex,” Fiorello stated. “There’d be no Cortex without stuff like MTC.”
It is not the first time MTC has faced funding uncertainty from state budobtain writers. After Gov. Eric Greitens took office in 2017, the Legislature slashed its budobtain 90% to just $2.5 million. It was not until after the pandemic that MTC recovered, with the state upping its appropriation to $16 million in 2023.
Blunting the impact of the most recent state cut, MTC won a $95 million federal grant in 2022 for its venture capital program that invests in companies alongside private funds. It has received the first round of those funds, which it split with nonprofit microlfinisher Justine Petersen. MTC kept about $19 million for its investment fund and has deployed about 80% of those funds, Scatizzi, MTC’s chief, stated.
MTC is in the process of applying for the second tranche of funds from that grant, potentially worth around $30 million, which could come in around the finish of the year, Scatizzi stated. That grant has not been impacted by the Trump administration’s cuts to federal funding, and Scatizzi stated he is confident the next round will come through. What happens with the third round is too far out to predict, he stated. Meanwhile, other federal funding that supports compact business and entrepreneurship is obtainting cut.
That could create Missouri’s support for MTC even more important in the near future.
“No one knows what’s happening at the federal landscape for the federal dollars for innovation and entrepreneurship,” Scatizzi stated. “If we see the drop in federal dollars going into innovation and entrepreneurship, then the question is, which states are best suited to fill that gap? And if your state isn’t able to fill that gap, the state may start to fall behind.”
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