While the team at the Tampa Bay Innovation Center (TBIC) has been promoting the development of innovation and the emerging tech startup community in Tampa Bay for 20 years, their new facility located in St. Pete’s Innovation District—the ARK Innovation Center—marks the first purposely constructed facility of its kind, for high-growth tech startups. In partnership with Pinellas County, the 45,000-square-foot, two-story, state-of-the-art facility opened for business in January of 2024. Rooted in the Innovation District, the organization feeds the entrepreneurial ecosystem through its Innovation Accelerator, monthly meetups, Tech Talk events featuring industry experts and successful startup founders and StartupXChange–a peer-to-peer networking mixer connecting founders with peers, mentors and advisors. TBIC also supports first-time founders with product strategy. The ARK Innovation Center project is funded by a partnership between public and private sources, including the facility's title sponsor, ARK Investment Management. ARK moved to St. Petersburg from New York in 2021 and focuses specifically on companies that are building disruptive technologies. ARK’s team found a fit with TBIC’s programs for nurturing the growth of early-stage tech ventures and has become a driving force in defining St. Pete’s tech future. The new center has coworking and office space for young startups, conference rooms, classrooms and podcasting studios. The two 1,000 sq. ft. lab spaces include one for product ideation using generative AI and another for hands-on product prototyping where teams can cost-effectively experiment with proofs-of-concept.