Michigan Startup News 2025: Year In Review

The story of Michigan startup news in 2025 could never be wrapped up in a single headline.

However, after six months of publishing on this site, there are repeatable patterns which show up across dozens of stories about Michigan startups and Michigan entrepreneurs; the kind of patterns that signal how our region may be able to develop each state's economic ecosystem, and which help explain what each state is all about, how they're pushing forward economic opportunity... and what each state is trying to be.

This article is a compilation of the Michigan startup news stories we shared on the pages of StartMidwest in 2025, and we’ve taken the effort to organize them around these patterns into recognizable themes for your interest. We've also linked to the stories that fueled these themes to make it easy to digest and read further. As the end of 2025 approaches apace and everything has slowed right down, here is your chance to catch up so please read on.

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1. Michigan and mobility: it’s really about industrial autonomy

It should be no surprise that the conversation about Michigan's entrepreneurial ecosystem involves a lot of discussion about the future of mobility. But our stories demonstrated that it isn't just talk: Michigan companies are prototyping it, piloting it, and making an effort to operationalize it by pairing industry, advanced manufacturing, and public infrastructure.

In 2025 that included a visible rise in autonomous systems across buses, drones, and trucks; plus the convenings that bring corporations, researchers, startup companies, and government into the same room.

Detroit Mobility Week for example aimed to put the city on the calendar as a hub to convene for the global mobility stack.

There were also initiatives to accelerate advanced air mobility, by structuring innovation in this area for acceleration, aligned to the state’s advanced manufacturing capabilities. “The effort aligned with Michigan Governor Whitmer's Executive Directive 2025-4, which was signed in July and established Michigan's Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Initiative,” we wrote at the time, adding “It also complements federal efforts to advance drone technology dominance in the U.S. and workforce development in an effort to sustain long-term industry growth.”

Additionally, a U.S. autonomous drone logistics network kicked off with Michigan pilot projects, a very “industrial Midwest” entry point into autonomy.

Meanwhile, Kodiak Robotics and Roush Industries teamed up to scale upfit and manufacturing of driverless trucks at Roush’s facility in Livonia, Michigan. This is how autonomy can become more real: by meeting (and adapting, utilizing) the existing automotive manufacturing capabilities.

Michigan State University’s autonomous electric bus route launched passenger service on a 5.12-mile route, which was SAE Level-4 certified and positioned as a ‘living laboratory’ according to those involved.

All of which demonstrates how Michigan is aiming to be the place where autonomy gets invented, built AND deployed, not just a place to find a demo partner.

2. Reindustrialize 2.0 is a strategy and Michigan is a testbed

A lot of regions want to be the next innovation hub, but one of Michigan’s (and indeed the Midwest’s) advantages in the present moment is that it already has the bones of industrial scale -  and 2025’s stories show the state trying to modernize those bones.

Hitachi’s JR Automation announced a new $72.8M global HQ in Zeeland, Michigan. With 286,000 sq ft of space and consolidation of ~350 employees. Construction was to begin in September, 2025 and conclude in early 2027.

Chris Thomas of Assembly Ventures talked about the event Reindustrialize 2.0 being held in Michigan, and put language around what a next-generation industrial economy looks like: “the presence of early-stage entrepreneurial energy alongside legacy enterprises. Those startups and growth-stage companies are going to be what drives the future of technological progress.” he said in our article. In his view, the state (and region) can be a place where venture capital, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain realities actually speak to each other.

Modern motorsport is a visible example of how ‘legacy’ industries are advancing, with Cadillac’s path to a 2026 Formula 1 debut also being a story about Midwest operations and engineering infrastructure across states, including manufacturing in Michigan.

Michigan is placing bets where it has structural advantage: industrial capability, engineering talent, and enterprise density, and attempting to attach the velocity of startup companies to it for the acceleration of Michigan's innovation economy.

3. Capital access is still a problem: 2025 was about building, not just wishing for more VC

Conversations in Michigan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem often start and end with “we need more early-stage capital.”

But the most interesting stories we shared about capital this year weren’t just the next fundraise They were about mechanisms: tax incentives, city grants, angel infrastructure, and coordinated competitions.

The statewide competition for Michigan-based startups, PitchMI (which launched in 2024) received a steroid boost to become one of the largest startup competition awards in the country: A $4M state-restricted prize pool over 16 months with regional events awarding prizes in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Traverse City and Grand Rapids and a grand prize of $1.25M for statewide winners to be crowned in 2026 in East Lansing. The expansion was backed by $3 million from the Michigan Innovation Fund, administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) alongside co-investment from the MSU Research Foundation’s Michigan Rise Evergreen Fund. The companion question we asked - would this change Michigan’s trajectory? - is basically the question of the year in funding.

Meanwhile, the City of Detroit Startup Fund launched for any Detroit-based startup to be able to access the $700K total investment capital, which will be distributed across 26 seed funding grants at $15K with scale funding at $50K of individual direct investment.

Away from funding, there was also Michigan tax credit support in the form of a proposed investor tax credit structure. Credit was suggested equal to half of qualified direct investment up to $3,000/year per taxpayer to begin in the 2025 tax year.

Then there was the Michigan Angel Collective with Managing Partner James Feagin declaring:  “I’ve always sought to answer the question, what do founders need next? Capital, mentorship, talent, business model refinement, GTM support, infrastructure.” He also provided us with one of the lines of the year on our pages that may well be the definition of things that need to change in our region: “Founders are moving at the speed of entrepreneurship… Everyone else is moving at the speed of risk.”

There is a lot of work to be done, but these stories identified how builders in Michigan are trying to create multiple smaller pipelines across city grants, angel collectives, state incentives, competitions and improve conversion between stages.

4. Institutions are being pulled closer to the startup economy (with real dollars attached)

This theme showed up constantly amongst a variety of institutions. Our universities are one of the greatest assets in the region, and they’re not just talent factories. In 2025, we talked a lot about them as infrastructure for startup companies - research-to-commercialization, workforce training, and pilots.

For example, Henry Ford Health + MSU Innovation Hub launched with a $10M venture fund and planned to invest approximately $2M annually over five years, with focus areas including digital health, AI, devices, diagnostics, workflow improvements. This would allow the possibility of “transforming breakthrough ideas into real-world solutions that will shape the next era of medicine right here in our own ecosystem,” we wrote at the time.

Meanwhile Kettering university launched the nation’s first accelerated semiconductor degree, demonstrating a workforce and industrial policy signal in one. At Eastern Michigan, they launched an Empowerment Program focused on helping low-income entrepreneurs build real business capability: an inclusion and capacity-building story, not another demo day story. And the MSU autonomous bus deployment as a “living laboratory” is a clean example of university-as-testbed.

The thread, based on our stories, is that Michigan businesses are trying to shorten the distance between research, workforce, and startup companies in an effort to gain compounding advantages over decades, not a quarter.

5. Michigan is still fighting for national perception

We could be seen as guilty of telling the story enough times so that the story becomes true. That may be the case with Michigan's entrepreneurial ecosystem, although our entire mission is to emphasise the stories that deserve national recognition.

Sometimes, that’s a major project. Sometimes it’s a billion dollar exit. Sometimes it’s Michigan businesses winning a national award. But it’s all part of the same effort (that we play a small role in propagating): changing what outsiders assume Michigan is.

Data Centers are a constant source of announcements in our region with the growth in artificial intelligence usage, and the OpenAI, Oracle “Stargate” proposal in Saline was one example. Announced as an AI infrastructure play and projected to begin construction in 2026, it will open with more than 1 GW capacity, and estimated to deliver 2,500+ union construction jobs plus 450+ permanent roles; Michigan governor Whitmer delivered another of those lines you need to read twice. With a plethora of data center developments, this one stood out after being characterized it as “the largest economic project in Michigan history” in our story.

A startup spinout from the University of Michigan, HistoSonics was acquired for $2.25B. This is a non-invasive cancer therapy story that was also a gigantic validation moment for Michigan life sciences outcomes.

Meanwhile, Detroit’s InvestNext won “Investment Management Platform of the Year” in the PropTech Breakthrough Awards, a story that also referenced its $15M Series B earlier in the year.

In a story that deviated from the norm - and was one of our most read - Usher and Big Sean announced that they would fund a $1M Detroit incubator at Michigan Central for young creators. An example of culture meeting entrepreneurship, the kind of hybrid narrative that Detroit is uniquely positioned for.

Ann Arbor Spark expanded their A2Tech360 festival and called for participants in an effort to “program the collisions” that turn into companies. And, finally zooming out beyond Michigan (although created by some of our local investors): the Great Lakes Venture Capital Summit story captured a similar ethos, with collaboration among GPs as strategy, not PR. “For the Midwest to win, we have to play to our strengths. We're never going to be the Yankees. We're not going to be the Red Sox, and we're not going to be the Dodgers” one of the organizers, Chad Summe shared with us.

That’s probably the best quotation we could use to close this summary, although we also want to include the list of stories of the investment capital provided to boost Michigan's innovation economy.

Here then are the fundraising stories for Michigan-based startups from our site year, shared around their respective industry. See you next year Michiganders…

• Mobility: Electric boat startup Voltaic Marine raises $3M  
• Advanced manufacturing: Window coating business NXLite raises $9.2M
• Industrial tech: Waste to energy startup Woodchuck raises $3.7M  
• Software: AI safety company Swept AI raises $1.4M
• Gaming: Scorbit raises $5M