AI-powered insurance marketplace. Chicago IL. Acquired by Prudential $3.5B 2019. Personalized health, life, and Medicare insurance.

Personalized celebrity video platform. Chicago IL. Spark Capital + Lightspeed. $1B valuation 2021.

Chicago IL. World's top business school. 9 Nobel laureates in economics. Home of behavioral economics (Richard Thaler, 2017 Nobel). Chicago School of Economics birthplace — Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Gary Becker. Houses Polsky Center for entrepreneurship + Duality quantum accelerator. New: Master in Finance + Master in Management programs (2024). $60M gift from Clifford Asness and John Liew

Chicago IL. UChicago-headquartered quantum hub. Connects Argonne NL, Fermilab, UChicago, UIUC, Northwestern, UWisconsin-Madison + 40+ industry partners (IBM, Google, Intel, Boeing). Recipient of billions in government + corporate investment. Two DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Centers: Q-NEXT (Argonne-led) and SQMS (Fermilab-led). One of longest ground-based quantum communication

Physical device manufacturing arm of Eyeweb — separate from the Manhattan software operation. Evanston IL, Northwestern University corridor. Built the sonar-based pupillary distance (PD) measurement devices. Troy ran the tech/engineering team across both locations.

Upscale urban convenience store and delivery app. Chicago IL. Jump Capital + Revolution. Closed all stores April 2024 — notable shutdown.

B2B software review and buyer intelligence platform. Chicago IL. Accel + IVP + Permira. $1B+ valuation. 100M+ annual users.

Urbana-Champaign IL. UIUC's primary quantum research hub. Part of DOE Q-NEXT National Quantum Information Science Research Center (with Argonne NL). Partners: IBM, Google, Boeing. Open Quantum Initiative (OQI) undergraduate fellowship. Works with Chicago Quantum Exchange. Quantum science and engineering PhD program through PME/UChicago partnership.

Urbana-Champaign IL. Founded 1985 after NSF responded to Larry Smarr's critique of US supercomputing. Released NCSA Mosaic (1993) — first graphical web browser, launched the commercial internet. NCSA Telnet (1986). Center for AI Innovation (CAII). Partners: NASA, IBM, US government. Delta supercomputer — NSF-funded. eDream Institute for interdisciplinary arts+computing research. Fiddler Innovation

Evanston IL. Top-5 MBA globally. Known for collaborative culture and management theory. Zell Center for Risk Research. Kellogg Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative (KIEI). Strong Chicago business community connections.

Evanston IL. Top-20 engineering school. NSF engineering research center grant $26M (2024). Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN). Center for Quantum Devices. Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. Strong interdisciplinary research with Feinberg Medicine.

Evanston IL. $15.17B endowment (Jun 2025, 6.7% return) — 13th largest US. $1.05B research FY2024. McCormick School of Engineering. Kellogg School of Management. Feinberg School of Medicine. Medill Journalism. 37 Nobel laureates. Ryan Family $480M gift (2021).

Point-of-care digital health media company. Chicago IL. Goldman Sachs + Alphabet. $5.5B valuation 2017 — later embroiled in fraud scandal. Illustrative of Chicago unicorn boom/bust dynamics.

Chicago IL. Est. at Chicago Booth 1998. Top-ranked US startup accelerator. Spawned Grubhub ($7.3B), Braintree ($800M acq. PayPal), Simple Mills. Deep Tech Ventures (DTV) program — quantum, data science/AI, cleantech, life sciences. New Venture Challenge: flagship competition. Duality accelerator (quantum-only, with Chicago Quantum Exchange). Transform accelerator (data science/AI). Deep Tech Ventu

Legal technology / eDiscovery platform. Chicago IL. Silver Lake Partners. $3.8B valuation 2021. Used in majority of US litigation.

Urbana-Champaign IL. Renamed from Dept of Computer Science in 2024 following $50M gift from Thomas Siebel (C3.ai founder, UIUC MS 1985). #5 CS nationally (US News 2025). #5 undergraduate engineering at Grainger (US News 2025). 90 full-time faculty. 30+ undergraduate programs, 9 graduate programs. Notable alumni: Thomas Siebel (C3.ai), Ray Ozzie (Lotus Notes/Microsoft CTO), Robert McCool (NCSA HTTP

Parking reservation platform. Chicago IL. Drive Capital + Jump Capital. 7M+ users.

AI-powered precision medicine and genomics platform. Chicago IL. Founded by Eric Lefkofsky (co-founder Groupon). IPO June 2024 NASDAQ: TEM at $5.9B. NEA + Google Ventures. Largest healthcare AI IPO of 2024.

Chicago IL. #1 quantum university in US (Nature Index July 2025). EPiQC collaboration (NSF $10M Expedition) — quantum computing software stack. Deep connections to Chicago Quantum Exchange, Argonne Q-NEXT, Fermilab SQMS. IBM $100M + Google $50M partnerships for quantum-centric supercomputer. Strong CS theory tradition. Faculty: Fred Chong (quantum software, co-founded Super.tech acquired by ColdQu

Chicago IL. First school of molecular engineering in US. $100M Pritzker Foundation commitment. Dean: Nadya Mason (since Oct 2023). Three themes: immuno-engineering, quantum engineering, energy & sustainability. No departments — organized around societal challenges. Co-founded with Argonne National Laboratory. Catalyzed ~$1B in regional Chicagoland quantum investment. Pritzker Nanofabrication Facil