Where Midwest startup hubs rank in Dealroom's 2026 Global Tech Ecosystem Index

Every year, our partners at Dealroom benchmark the world's cities against each other, based on their data for innovation and entrepreneurship. A fresh round of discussions then breaks out around the world about who is up, who is down… and what any of it actually means.

The 2026 edition of their Global Tech Ecosystem Index is out today, ranking 325 cities across 77 countries through three lenses - Global Champions (raw scale), Density Leaders (output per capita), and Rising Stars (growth) - using a 500-point percentile system which aims to measure the ‘well-rounded-ness’ of these ecosystems, rather than relying on single-metric outliers.

Despite that well-rounded aim, as expected the recognized hubs receive gold, silver and bronze in the Global Champions list, with the Bay Area, New York City and Boston taking those respective positions.

That has almost nothing to do with the Midwest… and yet everything to do with what we write about on our pages: global venture capital is concentrating faster than at any point Dealroom has tracked. The US share of global VC climbed to 65% last year, up from 55% in 2024. The Bay Area alone pulled in 35% of all global VC funding, up from 25.3% the year before, with 55.1% of all US funding while Silicon Valley companies raised $131 billion in scale-up capital, equivalent to 46% of global scale-up investment on their own. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of this year, the Midwest captured just 0.44% of the investment dollars nationally. The established U.S. cities are accompanied in the top ten of the Dealroom Global Champions list by Los Angeles in fifth, while Austin, Texas is 6th and the fastest-rising Global Champion in the top 10. 

All in all, it is no surprise to see the index further indicate how AI and late-stage funding are stacking into a small handful of US hubs at a pace that makes the rest of the global landscape look almost stationary by comparison.

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So… where does the Midwest fit in amongst all this, with capital flowing to a handful of locations and innovation density and ‘rising star’ status potentially relegated to a consolation prize?

Read on.

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Tech Ecosystems Global Champions: Chicago hits the top 20.

In the Global Champions ranking, Chicago is the only Midwest hub to crack the global top 20, holding onto 15th spot from last year. This places Chi-Town at Number 8 in North America, with Toronto 10th across the continent and Washington and San Diego following those we mentioned in the top 10. After that, you’ll have to scroll to find your Midwest city. Minneapolis-Saint Paul comes in at 46th, Pittsburgh - which we’re including as the Midwest for this article, ready for a debate on another day - at 47th (up eight places), Detroit at 71st (down five), and Columbus in 76th. Cincinnati climbed eleven spots to 84th, Madison climbed twelve to 98th, and Grand Rapids climbed ten to 139th. Cleveland slid seven places to 113th. Boise - which we also include here as part of the broader Midwest - fell 25 places to 179th, the steepest regional drop in either of the main rankings for any Midwest hub.

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One outlier worth flagging is a beneficiary of looking outside our ‘standard’ six Midwest states. 

Lincoln, Nebraska moved up 53 places in the Global Champions ranking to 214th, the largest jump of any city on the entire list. That doesn't put it anywhere near the front of the pack, but a 53-place leap doesn't happen by accident, so a quiet build over the last few years showing up in the data is worthy of further investigation. That leap is likely pulled up by university spinouts, agtech, and a manageable cost base, but the biggest single data point visible in the index is that Lincoln’s total funding growth was  up 536.9%, ranking it 27th globally on that score alone.

On raw scale, the Midwest is still a regional story like many others around the globe, but with one globally connected city. That hasn't changed. What has changed is the cluster of mid-sized hubs creeping up the ranking by single and double digits, the kind of movement we all want to see continue to compound.

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Density ranking: where Midwest startup hubs outperform

Density Leaders is the most flattering lens for our region. The methodology in this section strips out raw scale in order to answer the question of how productive an ecosystem is relative to its population and per capita metrics. This fits with the general thesis of the Midwest being undervalued on a per capita basis that we’ve talked about previously. In theory, this methodology should suit research-anchored mid-sized cities across the heartland of America.

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Three Midwest cities make the global top 35: Madison climbs seven places to 21st which also places it 10th across all of North America, Ann Arbor sits at 31st (down one), and Pittsburgh jumps eleven places to 33rd. Dealroom’s announcement of this Index actually singled out Madison and Pittsburgh as part of a wider cluster of "mid-sized research ecosystems in North America gaining momentum simultaneously." The pattern seems to be that where you have a serious research university with a working tech transfer office and enough density of capital to absorb spinouts, the per-capita numbers appear more robust.That’s the case at the top as well, with the Bay Area, Boston and Cambridge, UK take the top three slots.

You can go to the Index and see for yourself. Click any city in any list, then add up to four other hubs to make a comparison like the one we’ve generated below.

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Further down the list, Minneapolis-Saint Paul moves up three places to 60th, Grand Rapids climbs five to 65th, and Columbus rises four to 67th. Cincinnati posts the biggest gain in the region when it comes to density ratings - up 17 places to 87th. Chicago, interestingly, drops six places to 47th on this ranking, which tracks with the basic math: more people and relative output equals a lower density score. Comparing it to other major metropolises though, this is less flattering: London is 7th, New York City sits in 9th, Paris is 24th, Los Angeles 28th and Sydney is 45th.

Lincoln is the standout in the Density list as well. It climbed 70 places to 138th on this ranking - the second-biggest mover globally after Windsor-Maidenhead in the UK. Whatever has happened in Nebraska is real enough to show up across these two very different methodologies.

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Rising Stars: Midwest startup growth steady while Asia accelerate

The Rising Stars ranking is the one Midwest cities should probably care about most and yet they feature in it least. Mumbai holds first place, Hefei in China climbs 15 spots to second, while Istanbul moves up two to third. Asia takes 14 of the global top 20 and the Middle East - Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in particular - are climbing fast. Toronto, the most relevant North American comparison to Midwest cities geographically, sits at 55th, up 10 places.

Detroit, at 110th, is the highest-ranked Midwest city on the rising stars list and 10th on the list in all of North America, and yet it dropped seven places this year. Columbus rose 31 places to 211th. Grand Rapids climbed 41 places to 241st. Lincoln, on its third strong showing in this data, climbed 85 places to 129th.

The pattern across the Midwest on Rising Stars is the same that anyone watching the region already knew: things aren't really moving down, but they aren't moving up the way other hubs across the world and indeed in competitive regions across the country are either. The more honest read of the data is that our region keeps a stable position. Unfortunately, as investment dollars continue to cluster around a few select regions and industries, these are lists where stability isn't really a win.

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What to take away from the Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026

We’ve had a few days more than you to read into the data of the 2026 Ecosystem index, and came up with three primary take aways:

1. Global capital is concentrating into a smaller and smaller number of US hubs, and we should stop pretending otherwise. 

2. The density story flatters the Midwest's research universities and a handful of mid-sized hubs that are quietly compounding - Madison, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Columbus, Grand Rapids - and that is the most honest competitive advantage the region has right now. 

3. The rising stars list is a useful corrective: this region is stable, but the cities accelerating fastest in the world are largely in Asia, the Middle East, and a few other less expected pockets.

Stability is fine. There is in fact nothing wrong with it in an era of almost constant flux, but… it is not the same as winning.

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