Birmingham, Alabama ‘steadfast’ in Tech Hub commitment

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA — Almost two years ago, the Commerce Department under former President Joe Biden designated 31 metropolitan areas as Tech Hubs, an effort they said would spur regional innovation and create jobs.

Among those was Birmingham, Alabama, which received recognition for advancing biotechnology and its efforts to discover new drugs and vaccines, including more representative clinical trials.

Led by the Southern Research Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, it set the city up to receive millions of dollars in federal support, which it said could result in an injection of $75 million into the local economy. In the waning days of the Biden administration, the city was announced as one of six implementation grant recipients, and would receive $44 million.

But this year, the program was thrown into doubt as new Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced in May that the department was “revamping” the Tech Hub grant awards and would make new awards next year.

It’s led to some uncertainty in cities around the country as part of a wider scaling-back of federal support, but Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said in an interview this week that the city’s tech ecosystem is already very strong, and while it will only grow in the coming years, he remains confident of receiving federal funding in the future.

Woodfin sat down with Route Fifty before the SLOSS.Tech conference in downtown Birmingham to discuss the city’s burgeoning tech ecosystem, the uncertainty around federal tech hub funding and what the future holds in the Magic City.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Route Fifty: We have this growing tech ecosystem in Birmingham. Why? What's happening out there in this city that is fostering all these new companies?

Randall Woodfin:  There's some intentionality. The city of Birmingham is a city that is not necessarily investor driven. It's a very founder-driven city. We've had some founders here since, I would say, the 2017, 2018 window just doing their thing. There's been some intentionality about building a tech ecosystem and finding ways to support the founders, finding ways to support startups, finding ways to getting beyond the founders and saying, “What about the next generation?” How do you connect this to industry and workforce and even tying it to our education system and supporting our youth who would be the next generation of not just a future worker, but the next founder?

Route Fifty: When it comes to intentionality, what does that look like?

Woodfin: One of the ways is we have the Innovation Depot. As a kid, this building was a former Sears. I only know that because of my grandparents; it was one of the few places they took me when my feet couldn't even touch the floorboard of their Cadillac. But this building, now in 2025 for the last decade-plus, sits as an innovation hub, a place where dreamers can take risks and be supported and can spin out. You have other things, on the next generation in Ed Farm. That's the whole idea of connecting innovation and technology to support our youth and the training the next generation around coding. That's extremely important. And then it looks other ways. I think the city, the county and the state find ways to sit down with that founder who's looking to expand, and we want to retain them right here. We don't want San Francisco or Nashville or Austin or Minneapolis to just gobble them up. It’s about what do we do through public, private partnerships, the city, county and state, to support those to expand their business right here.

Route Fifty: I’ve heard from others about the Apple story in 2018. What happened there?

Woodfin: I wasn't even the mayor six months, and I thought it was important that I locked arms with innovators and entrepreneurs here. I believe that some of the best mayors in America steal ideas. They benchmark, they take their city on tour by going to other cities and look at what they do very well. One of the things I stumbled upon was Apple had this relationship and partnership with Chicago. I took Deon [Gordon, president and CEO of the TechBirmingham organization], I took the [public schools] superintendent, I took various leaders in the community. It was April 2018; I got sworn in at the end of November.

I want to see that relationship, and then I want to know how we tailor it to fit our needs, our desires here in Birmingham, and we were there three or four days and talking with their mayor and talking with Apple leadership in that city. The biggest thing I saw was, what do we do for the next generation? We have to teach them how to code. You want the next engineers, you want the next tech startups, you want the next founders, you want the next creators. It's going to be in our next and youngest generation.

It was all centered around investing in our youth, and it spun out Ed Farm. We took two years to massage that out, literally built the plane. And in 2020 [Apple CEO] Tim Cook came down and helped us kick it off. Ed Farm has been in existence the last five years, and it's been amazing. But for that trip, our relationship with Apple, Tim Cook and, most importantly, Ed Farm, which invests in our next and youngest generation around coding and tech, would not exist.

Route Fifty: It's so interesting to me that you guys are already looking at investing in your own people. It probably is very easy for a lot of cities just to go, well, we'll just bring them in from outside, a load of employees, a corporate headquarters or whatever. This sounds a lot more nuanced.

Woodfin: It's personal. I was born and raised here, a significant amount of people call Birmingham their home. They fell in love with Birmingham, they got married here, they have children here, their families are here. For us, when we think about being a tech hub, whatever you want to call it, it's more than just an industry. For us, it's about innovation. For us, it's about creating resilience around what we're going to do to support our tech ecosystem. You can't have that just only by attracting outside talent. You have to invest in the talent that's right here. Every year, I stand on stage and shake anywhere between 1,100-1,200 high school graduates’ hands. Half will go to college. But I think they all deserve to understand this world.

Route Fifty: I was walking around Vulcan Park this morning. It was beautiful, a lot of history. You guys have lived about three or four different lifetimes in this city already. Where does tech fit in? Does this feel like a new chapter?

Woodfin: That is a great question. I believe the city of Birmingham is on its third iteration of its economic identity, its economic direction, its economic trajectory. And there is no world in this third iteration where tech doesn't lead the conversation. We were extremely fortunate back in October 2024 to receive a [federal] Tech Hub designation. Even before that, that second iteration, healthcare and financial services, we've seen tech up in both of those in a positive way for us, particularly around healthcare and life saving medicine, as well as the production and creation of jobs.

What does the third iteration look like? It's very simple. When I say tech is the lead, I believe this intersection of healthcare, biotechnology and innovation is the tip of the sword for Birmingham's economic identity. And I believe it is not just about creating more lifesaving medicine in the form of personalized medicine and genomics and all those things, but in my right hand, literally, it’s the creation of thousands of jobs over the next decade. That's transformational for families here, that's transformational for employers. That's transformational for the would-be employee, as well as those founders who we have to support. We want to spin out new medicine at Southern Research Center and UAB. We want this medicine to change the landscape of healthcare, whether it's diabetes or heart or any other health issues you can think of. We literally want to save lives here in Birmingham. But while we're saving lives, we also want to commercialize and do job creation.

Route Fifty: Is it helpful having world class research here?

Woodfin: It’s super helpful. We're benchmarking. We're not trying to be the Palo Alto/San Francisco area. We're not trying to be Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University. We're not trying to be Boston or Cambridge, Massachusetts, as it relates to all the things they have going on in biotechnology. What we're trying to be is the best version of ourselves. The best version of Birmingham economic identity is committed to leaning all the way in on our Tech Hub designation around biotechnology.

Route Fifty: I want to ask about some of some of the history of this place. It’s a heck of a curve you're getting graded on. We're surrounded by so much. How do not find yourself being burdened by that history? Some might shrink from it, or they might spend their whole time thinking about it, or worrying about it. How do you walk that tightrope?

Woodfin: For me, that's twofold. One, I tell people, the city of Birmingham is not a city of victims, it's the city of victors. You peel back and think about our history, there's something to consider. Many cities in America, particularly in the southeast, dealt with segregation and racism. Birmingham had a unique lens in the form that we reckoned with our differences on the world stage for everyone to see. We taught not just the state of Alabama, we taught not just the southeast, we taught not just America, but we taught the world how to fight for justice.

When I say a city of victors, that's what I mean, because things that happen here actually change laws in our country, change the landscape in America. Is it perfect? No. Is there still a long way to go? Absolutely. But the things that happened here, and that the world saw it, literally pushed the needle for actual change, and amendments and laws came out of that. That tells me, even when tied to this conversation about technology, Birmingham has a unique narrative and story to tell, and that is to always lean in on being the best version of ourselves, drown out the noise and figure out, what's the play, what's the strategy to be successful.

That's what we do every day, and we do it in partnership. It's not just here at City Hall. We have some amazing founders in tech here, and I get a chance to court them. I get a chance to listen to them and understand their world, and then they get a chance to help me. I think about this world of tech. It's not about trying to be a hot shot, it's not about trying to be the biggest kid on the block. It's really about, how do we actually solve problems? Birmingham is a city in America meant to solve problems. We focus on solutions, ideas, and we get in the trenches, we support our founders, we support our tech people who are leaning all the way in. And it's not just through tax dollars; it's through brain trust. It's through being thought partners, and it's through genuine public, private partnerships.

Route Fifty: Obviously, there’s a lot of noise out of Washington, and federal funding for the Tech Hub might be in jeopardy. I'm curious for your thoughts on what's going on at the moment. Are you worried? Are you okay? How are you feeling about all this stuff that's going on?

Woodfin: I don't like it, no. But at the exact same time, my commitment is steadfast. Our commitment is steadfast. This will be our third time applying for this funding. We will get it, and we will get it because we deserve it, and we deserve it because we are protecting the country, sharing things that need the country's attention. As it relates to lifesaving medicine, biotechnology, we'll also get it because it's the right thing to do.

Politics can have its ups and downs. What I want to say is going to sound like an oxymoron. We have to be patient and have a sense of urgency at the same time. Patience requires us to understand that we got our Tech Hub designation in 2024 but we didn't get funding on the first round, and then conversations happen again. In the beginning of 2025 we got funding, and we were excited, and we knew it was going to accelerate everything we want to do around our tech ecosystem. And then the federal government’s like, “Ah, psych, we trick.” I'm like, “Man, that sucks.”

Then step back and you realize the people that receive that funding at the beginning of the year are the only people who can reapply. We're going to reapply a third time, and that's what I mean by being steadfast. Now, what does the sense of urgency part mean? What's in our own local control that we continue to move this conversation on our Tech Hub designation for job creation, for lifesaving medicine, for research, for investing in the next generation, creating that path and pipeline for those who want to be in this space. When those dollars do come down in whatever quarter, in 2026 not only will we be ready to receive them, but we’ve already been chopping wood.

Route Fifty: You're a man of this city, right? Born and raised here. What's it been like to see this city grow, change, evolve? You've had a front row seat.

Woodfin: This job requires me to eat humble pie every day. I want you to know it tastes good. I represent a city that's historic in nature, but we're not resting on our past, and we're not a city of victims. It's important that I lead with vision every second, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year. And the vision has to be compelling enough where it scoops up everybody, those in in the tech industry and those not. It has to scoop up black and white people. It has to scoop up every generation. It has to scoop up every socioeconomic status. I am surrounded by an amazing team that keeps us moving. Things in Birmingham have not only gotten better, but I can look you squarely in your eyes and tell you I feel confident that things will continue to get better.

Route Fifty: What does the future hold for this city, and particularly in tech, but also just generally the economy? What's on your mind?

Woodfin: The first thing is, we will take our Tech Hub designation and totally transform not just our economic identity, but prosperity in the city. What's on my mind is job creation. With this Tech Hub designation, we're about to take it to the next level, and that's going to create, again, thousands of jobs, but also lifesaving medicine. Our Tech Hub designation around biotechnology is extremely important to this entire country and is going to be transformational.

The other thing on my mind is very simple. When we create all these jobs, I’ve got to make sure the people right here, not just talent from outside of Birmingham, but people right here can participate. That means I’ve got to focus on workforce training, workforce development and workforce opportunities. And it's not just for the youngest generation. It's for that 50- or 60-year-old that may retire but don't want to sit at home but needs a new skill. Maybe for that 20-, 30-, or 40-year-old who's looking to transition out of what they're currently doing. Job creation and workforce, those are the top two things as relates to our tech ecosystem, to make sure we create a pipeline for everyone to be able to participate.