TechChicago Week 2025 wasn’t a conference. It was a flex.

Great events and great energy.

It felt like a city realizing its own ambition in real time. Hundreds of side events, thousands of attendees, and enough critical mass to make people from NYC, SF, and even Europe jump on a plane just to witness it. That’s not noise. That’s signal.

At Drive, we decided to take a different approach. Instead of hosting a dozen surface-level sessions, we focused on five tightly curated gatherings. Each one was designed to spark real collisions between the people building the future.

The result? More than 1,500 registrations and some of the most important conversations of the week:

We kicked things off Monday with Powering AI in the Heartland, a serious look at how the Midwest can lead the next wave of AI infrastructure. It brought together a lineup you won’t find in the Valley: policymakers, nuclear operators, AI founders, energy investors, and the people running our region’s data centers.

Our panel featured an incredible group:

The timing for the event couldn’t have been better. Just one day later, Senator Rezin introduced legislation that could fast-track the buildout of small modular reactors across Illinois, reinforcing our state's role as a cornerstone for both clean energy and compute.

Tuesday brought a lighter mood. We teamed up with 1871 for TechPalooza, filling our rooftop with local vendors, live demos, and the kind of vibes that only happen in the middle of a perfect Chicago summer afternoon.

By Wednesday, it was time to go deep in healthcare.

Our AI Agents in Healthcare Symposium brought health execs, scientists, and founders into one room to explore how agents will transform one of the country’s largest and most broken systems.

We heard from Drive Partner Erandi De Silva as she reimagined her biotech company through an AI-first lens. Then Jonathan Ozeran from Tempus pulled back the curtain on the agents already deployed inside one of Chicago’s most important companies.

Afterward guests joined breakout sessions to get even more tactical. Huge thanks to JP Morgan for partnering with us to make it happen.

On Thursday afternoon, we returned to our TechChicago Week roots with our annual Pre-Seed Between the Coasts, a gathering that’s become a fixture for early-stage founders and investors building beyond the usual coastal echo chambers.

The panel was led by Laurie Bauer of Cooley and brought together sharp minds from across the Midwest: Ryan Broshar of Matchstick, Scott Holloway of Starting Line, Adi Tantravahi of Cofactor, and Logan LaHive of Long Chicago.

This year’s conversation felt especially relevant. The rules have changed. Founders can’t just show up with a slide deck anymore. You need a product, a story, and signs of traction.

The discussion ranged from the realities of capital efficiency to the value of staying scrappy in uncertain markets.

We were grateful to partner with Bernstein Private Wealth and StartMidwest to make it all happen.

And that night, we dimmed the lights for a private dinner we called the Multi-Agent Supper Club, co-hosted with AWS and PREDICTif.

A little over a dozen founders working on autonomous systems came together to talk shop. What’s actually working? What’s overhyped? How do you get agents into production, especially in the enterprise?

The answers weren’t fluff. They were honest and full of real-world perspective.

Last week, the White House released its “America’s AI Action Plan,” and I took a closer look. While most headlines focused on deregulation and global competition, one thing stood out: the plan opens the door for a Midwest-led AI buildout.

The plan sets one-year permitting timelines for data centers, semiconductor fabs, and high-voltage transmission on federal land which cuts years off the current process.

That aligns with Chicago’s edge in compute. Our region already supports 1.9 GW of data center capacity, a record-low 1.9% vacancy, and over $11B committed to new builds since 2019.

Statewide, Illinois hosts 200+ data centers, supporting 20,000 jobs and $3.5B in annual labor income.

Energy is the second pillar. Illinois’ six nuclear stations and 11 reactors produced 54% of the state’s electricity in 2023, the highest share in the US.

The plan also backs geothermal and SMRs, both already underway in Illinois. The DOE is funding $17.6M in geothermal pilots, and State Senator Sue Rezin’s SB 2681 would require state agencies to rule on SMR permits within 150 days, mirroring the federal push for speed and signaling Illinois’ intent to move ahead of rival states.

It also creates new programs like an AI Workforce Hub, a federal AI talent exchange, and high-security data centers for defense and intelligence offering new anchors that could land in Midwest cities.

Put the pieces together and Chicago stands to become the country’s test bed for AI infrastructure. We already combines tier‑one connectivity, sub‑7 cent per kWh industrial power, and abundant fresh‑water cooling. Add streamlined federal and state permitting, a nuclear‑heavy grid, and liquid GPU markets, and our region can deliver power, chips, and floor space at a speed coastal hubs will struggle to match.

This plan is not just tech policy. It is an infrastructure mandate. Chicago has spent 150 years proving it can build at scale. The AI era just wrote our city its next set of blueprints.

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