Alabama runs on two cities that rarely get named in the same breath. Huntsville earned the nickname Rocket City off Redstone Arsenal and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and Cummings Research Park -- the second-largest research park in the country, 300-plus companies and 26,000 employees -- still runs on that anchor: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Leidos/Dynetics sit alongside homegrown names like ADTRAN and Teledyne Brown Engineering. Birmingham carries the weight the history books actually assign the state -- the 1963 civil rights campaign, Kelly Ingram Park, the 16th Street Baptist Church -- while running its own real startup base out of Innovation Depot, anchored by UAB research, Regions Financial, and Shipt, the grocery-delivery startup Target acquired in 2017. Two cities, two different kinds of consequential, both real.
Region Stats
Total firms
97
VC / investors
1
Companies
71
Schools
25
Known For
Rocket Science
Steel & Civil Rights
UAB Research
Alabama