Mayor Daniel Lurie on Tuesday launched a partnership with eight Midwestern universities, cutting the ribbon on Third Coast Foundry, a new hub for student entrepreneurs in San Francisco’s South Beach neighborhood.
The 3,647-square-foot workspace will host startup pitches, investor meetings and networking events for participating students, working to make the city’s downtown innovation scene more accessible to Midwestern students.
For Lurie, the innovation hub is part of his vision to revitalize San Francisco’s downtown, alongside his efforts to increase tourism, economic activity and private investment in the city.
“Universities bring incredible energy,” said Lurie. “They bring new ideas and new people into our city. They strengthen the culture of innovation that has defined San Francisco for generations and that is exactly what we want more of here in downtown San Francisco.”
Third Coast Foundry will bring students and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Washington University in St. Louis to downtown San Francisco. Taken together, the consortium’s member institutions enroll more than 300,000 students and invest roughly $10 billion annually in research, according to the Office of the Mayor.
The initiative has been spearheaded by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the University of Chicago’s hub for entrepreneurship and startups, which has managed the hub since its soft launch in March.
Surrounded by venture capital
At the formal launch Tuesday, university leaders spoke about how they hoped the center will work to connect founders’ ideas with the venture capital that exists in San Francisco, creating real opportunity for their Midwestern students.
“Where we are standing right now in SoMa, if you walk six minutes in any direction of this office, there is $100 billion of venture capital in that radius,” said Samir Mayekar, managing director of the Polsky Center. “That is not possible anywhere else in the world. That’s why we’re here.”
Since March, the center has already worked toward its founding goal to connect university startups with alumni founders and investors, opening its doors to more than 1,000 visitors and event attendees.
On Tuesday night, the hub hosted the Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day, providing an opportunity for 40 startups to pitch their businesses to more than 200 investors.
“Where we are standing right now in SoMa, if you walk six minutes in any direction of this office, there is $100 billion of venture capital in that radius. That is not possible anywhere else in the world. …”
Samir Mayekar, Polsky Center managing director
“What we’re doing here together, with the University of Chicago’s leadership and vision, is hotwiring our connection between our collective founders and our capital, mentors and talent that live in this extraordinary Bay Area ecosystem that we know will help turn our groundbreaking research into world-leading companies,” said Meredith Grelli, interim executive director of Carnegie Mellon’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
The campus is the mayor’s most recent effort to bring students to San Francisco, with the city announcing Vanderbilt’s plans to acquire the California College of the Arts’ longtime campus in 2027 and establish a long-term presence near Mission Bay.
The hub also marks the return of Northwestern University to the city, after the school announced that it would not renew the lease on its campus at 44 Montgomery St. in May 2025, ending its decade-long residence at the downtown San Francisco site. The campus closed in the spring of this year.
Third Coast Foundry started a two-year pilot period in March and is set to be re-evaluated in 2028.
