Massachusetts

‘I’m starting to worry about Massachusetts’: Is Boston’s tech and innovation scene withering? – The Boston Globe

Published

1 month ago

January 27, 2026

‘I’m starting to worry about Massachusetts’: Is Boston’s tech and innovation scene withering? – The Boston Globe

“Biotech is way off from a few years ago,” he noted, along with the fact that just one of Forbes’ AI 50 — a list of the hottest, privately held artificial intelligence companies — is based in Massachusetts. More than 30 are in California, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and a second Boston-area company, OpenEvidence, recently decamped to Miami, leaving only one locally: AI music firm Suno.

Halligan continued: Federal funding cuts have been painful for local research. Boston is super expensive. Plenty of condos in the city stand empty. The so-called millionaires tax is pushing some affluent residents to Florida and other states. And the kicker: Boston is “not ‘cool’ for young folks.”

When it comes to the tech scene, “what Brian is saying is absolutely dead on,” says Bilal Zuberi, an MIT alum and venture capitalist who used to work in Boston but now lives in Silicon Valley. “There’s a real problem.”

The discussion of local tech’s decline has been brewing for years, but the global AI boom (and biotech’s recent dip) has brought it to a head. In 2025, Massachusetts startups raised $16.7 billion in venture capital, a 12 percent increase over 2024. But other states did much better: California’s total jumped 82 percent, and Texas rose 72 percent, closing the gap with Massachusetts.

The investment and job market for life sciences — Boston’s strength for over two decades — has been pretty terrible for the last couple of years. VC funding for local biotechs fell 17 percent in the first half of last year, to the lowest level since 2017. And the federal government’s funding cuts for research at universities has been tough for both science and talent retention.

Entrepreneur Will Manidis saw Halligan’s post almost immediately, and it hit a nerve. About a dozen years after Halligan cofounded HubSpot in 2006, Manidis started building ScienceIO in Boston. By the late 2010s, he argues, the environment for entrepreneurs had substantially deteriorated.

Manidis liked Boston, but he felt he needed a bigger talent pool to help his company succeed. He eventually left for New York and, in 2024, sold ScienceIO to Veradigm for $140 million.

That year, New York overtook Massachusetts as the second-most-successful state in attracting venture capital funding. (California is ahead by leaps and bounds, and in the fourth quarter of 2025, New York City attracted nearly three times as much funding as the Boston area.)

“If you are building an enterprise software — or really any kind of AI or software — company, the fundamental input to that machine is engineers who are willing to work very intensely for a number of years,” Manidis notes.

And he found two hurdles to recruiting these workers in Boston. First, many engineers had partners who were doctors, and they tended to leave when their partner got matched with a far-away hospital. Second, Massachusetts had “incredibly aggressive non-compete and non-solicitation [policies] that are not mirrored anywhere else in the country,” meaning that workers who left a company couldn’t easily — or quickly — join a company doing similar work. (Though noncompetes are now regulated by a 2018 law, they are still enforceable in Massachusetts.)

What we’ve seen, Manidis argues, is a kind of hollowing-out of the Boston tech ecosystem, leaving the city with far less talent than San Francisco or New York.

“ I interview a lot of people coming fresh out of college — from the local schools,” says Mikey Shulman, the chief executive of Suno (the only AI 50 company in Massachusetts). “And more so than ever, people are just dying to move to New York and SF.” He says if Boston “is serious about being a serious hub for tech, that’s a problem that needs to get fixed.”

“More so than ever, people are just dying to move to New York and SF,” said Mikey Shulman, the CEO of Suno.Barry Chin/Globe Staff

Indeed, a report by the Massachusetts High Technology Council found that about 40 percent of graduates of Massachusetts universities in AI-related fields between 2010 and 2023 stayed in the state, versus an estimated 80 percent of their peers in California, New York, and Texas.

A decade ago, Shulman thought Boston was “the second best city for tech. And now I don’t think it’s third . . . My impression is that it’s in decline.” He believes that decline is “fixable,” and he’s grateful that Halligan “said the quiet part out loud.”

“The entrepreneurs in Boston will tell you that Boston is really not a fun place to build a company,” says Zuberi, the California VC. “Not a place where they’re appreciated until they become successful.”

Not having richly valued startups deprives the city of the sorts of companies that can fill offices (vacancies have proved tough on Boston’s budget) and rev up a tax base (right now, the burden is falling to home owners)

“While I am sympathetic to calls to reclaim Boston as a great technology ecosystem — I would love to move back and not deal with New York,” Manidis posted to X on Jan. 6, “I struggle to see how the remaining ecosystem doesn’t enter complete free fall.”

Drew Volpe, the founder of Boston venture capital firm First Star Ventures, knows there’s a lot on the line. “I think there’s a real risk that if we don’t get our mojo back,” says Volpe, who invests in both tech and biotech, “in a decade there’s very little biotech here, and it’s no longer the center of the world. And that most biotech programs are in China or other places.”

Volpe agrees that it’s gotten harder for young people to stay in Boston. The opportunities are often too compelling elsewhere (despite the fact that New York City and San Francisco have even more competitive housing markets).

So what — if anything — can Boston do to pick itself up?

Volpe offers this: “ I think this is an ecosystem that tends to really like pedigree. We tend to like founders who went to MIT or Harvard, are very packaged, and have the right credentials. And I think that hurts. I think one thing the Bay Area does well is worry less about pedigree. And I think there’s a lot of really talented people here who maybe didn’t get a PhD at Harvard, but have done really great research and deserve a chance to go take a big swing.”

Rich Miner, who cofounded Android in Cambridge in 2004 — and sold it to Google for $50 million in 2005 — says there has long been a belief that East Coast investors are “Puritan-Boston-based,” making them “a little bit more conservative than the West Coast firms.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s move to the West Coast in 2004, Miner notes, reflected the difficulty of navigating a tech elite who, at that time, were largely based on Route 128. ”It was probably easier for Zuckerberg to get to Logan and fly to the West Coast and take some VC meetings than it was for him to figure out how to get out to 128 with no mass transit. And people wouldn’t have funded him. Because it’s like: ‘What have you done, kid? You’re from Harvard with this dating app thing? Whatever.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2007.Paul Sakuma

Miner, a serial entrepreneur who has invested in startups, argues that as a tech hub, Boston doesn’t appear to have “materially changed over the past 20 years.” He believes the city is doing a lot of the right things.

Still, there’s a stat he wants to improve: “We only retain somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the tech grads who are of the ilk that will do startups.” To boost its tech scene, he says, Boston needs to improve those numbers. Lots of internships would allow young workers to “meet people, they build a network. They realize they can raise money here.”

Zuberi says founders have told him that Boston venture capital firms have offered them half of what firms in Silicon Valley have offered: “Boston VCs would just laugh at them.”

Boston has ”a significant resource that we completely ignore,” he notes. “We have an influx of hundreds of thousands of kids from not only around the country, but around the world. And we sort of treat them as: Yeah, whatever.”

A new initiative launched earlier this month seeks to fortify the city’s tech network, offering an array of new in-person events in 2026. Spearheaded by the Boston tech firm Whoop — and joined by other companies as well as the state — the initiative could be a step toward making founders feel more supported.

But the challenge is real and urgent. Though Boston can’t become Silicon Valley, it’s dangerous to let the talent pool thin out, watch up-and-comers relocate, and face the economic ramifications of having the next wave of great tech companies — and big employers — leave us behind.

Kara Miller can be reached at kara.miller@globe.com. Follow Kara on Twitter @karaemiller.

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Massachusetts

Crews battle fire at Townsend home

Published

10 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

A fire broke out Sunday morning in Townsend, Massachusetts.

The Townsend Fire department said shortly before 7 a.m. that firefighters were on scene for a structure fire on Dudley Road.

People have been asked to avoid the area.

The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services said state police fire investigators assigned to the state fire marshal’s office are responding to assist the Townsend Fire Department.

There was no immediate word on any injuries, or any information on what caused the fire. It’s also unclear if the large snow piles in the area impeded access to fire hydrants, as was the case at the house explosion in Taunton last week.

This developing story will be updated when we learn more

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Massachusetts

Eight high school takeaways from the midst of the state tournaments, plus a new Attleboro football coach – The Boston Globe

Published

22 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Eight high school takeaways from the midst of the state tournaments, plus a new Attleboro football coach – The Boston Globe

Throw in Newton North winning its first state gymnastics title in 54 years, two Natick runners (and one from Oliver Ames) capturing New England titles, a last-minute goal from St. John’s (Shrewsbury) boys’ hockey to eliminate BC High, and plenty of overtime thrillers, and you get an all-time action-packed day.

Find all the scores here, and take a moment to browse all of our coverage:

Not seeing your team’s highlights in Takeaways? Here are all the ways to submit scores and stats to Globe Schools via phone, email, and social media.

▪ With a deep 3-pointer in the first quarter of Greater New Bedford’s 68-43 win over Springfield International, junior Jai-Ana Silva became the program’s leading scorer, surpassing Stephanie Antoine’s 1,493 points, set in 2012. Silva finished with 31 points and now sits at 1,513. Earlier this season, she became the fourth female 1,000-point scorer in school history.

▪ With 30 points in a 90-68 win over Quincy, Beverly senior Jacob Klass surpassed Peter Wynne’s scoring mark of 1,351, set in 1981. Klass, who reached 1,000 earlier this season, has 1,371.

▪ Concord-Carlisle senior goalie Sam Griswold made 44 saves, including the 1,000th of his career, in a 2-1 win over Woburn.

▪ Hoosac Valley senior Qwanell Bradley joined the 1,000-point club on a 3-pointer during a 78-59 Division 5 first-round win over Pacific Rim Charter.

▪ A pair of Bulldogs reached 100 points in Canton’s 9-0 smackdown of Somerset Berkley. Senior defenseman Teddy Shuman got there with a goal and three assists, and senior center Joey Ryan also reached the mark with three helpers.

▪ Taunton junior Jamie Vallarelli matched the school’s points record, joining Jeff Gallagher (’94) with 139, by notching a goal and adding an assist on the overtime tally that kept the Tigers’ season alive with a 3-2 win over Middleborough.

The single-digit seeds are starting to fall.

Saturday saw the first three top-five seeded teams sent home, with No. 3 St. John’s Prep boys’ hockey getting taken down by No. 14 Arlington Catholic in Division 1 action — the highest seed sent home through the first five days of the tournament.

The highest-ranked team to be bounced from the Division 2 boys’ hockey bracket became No. 5 Woburn. It fell, 2-1, to No. 12 Concord-Carlisle, which got an incredible 44-save performance from senior Sam Griswold and goals from Ben Brooks and Joe Grasso.

Division 3 also saw a top-five falter, as No. 5 Pembroke was clipped by No. 13 Norwood, 3-1, in the second round. John Lynch, Anthony Parise, and Mark Trahon provided the goals.

Not to be left out, Division 4 boys’ hockey also saw a significant upset, with No. 23 Bourne riding Jackson Palmborg’s 26 saves to a 3-2 first-round win over No. 10 Hudson.

On the hardcourt, No. 24 Pembroke boys’ basketball didn’t mind a morning ferry ride to Martha’s Vineyard, taking down the ninth-seeded hosts, 65-50, behind Will Farrell’s 24 points.

▪ Seventh-grader Effie Parsons found the net with 31 seconds left in overtime as No. 2 St. Mary’s girls’ hockey escaped a strong upset attempt from No. 18 Winchester, which led, 2-1, before Alyssa Norden tied it up in the third period.

▪ Reading sophomore Payton Curran not only delivered the equalizer in the final minute of regulation, but provided the overtime winner to lift the Rockets to a 3-2 girls’ hockey win over Waltham.

▪ Nantucket’s Gaven Smith forced overtime against Swampscott with a 3-pointer with nine seconds left in regulation, but the fourth-seeded Big Blue rode 26 points from Connor Chiarello and 25 from Teddy O’Neill to a 67-61 win over the No. 29 Whalers.

▪ No. 25 Bishop Fenwick girls’ hockey nearly upset No. 8 Bishop Stang, which would have eliminated both of last year’s Division 1 finalists, but the Spartans survived, 1-0, on junior Alexis Pettinato’s overtime winner.

▪ Braden LaChance netted the overtime winner for Taunton, which survived Middleborough, 3-2, in the third matchup between the two programs in 12 days. The Tigers won, 4-1, on Feb. 16 at Aleixo Arena before Middleborough prevailed, 4-0, on Feb. 18 at Bridgewater Ice Arena.

▪ Nico Santella scored on a stick-side snipe with 42.2 seconds left to propel St. John’s (Shrewsbury) past BC High, 2-1, in a Division 1 second-round matchup of Catholic Conference rivals.

Cal Atherton, Newburyport — The senior erupted for 31 points, guiding the Clippers to a first-round win over the defending Division 2 champions, Somerset Berkley.

Allen Brown Jr., Holbrook — The senior poured in 32 points, the highest total reported to the Globe on Saturday, to lead the Bulldogs past Boston Prep, 66-45 and into the second round.

Amelia Crowe, Pentucket — Amelia Crowe caught fire from deep, draining eight 3-pointers en route to 27 points and a 40-33 first-round win over Seekonk.

Addy Harrington, Duxbury — The senior produced one of the night’s three hat tricks, scoring thrice in a 4-2 second-round win over Melrose.

Levi McNally, Barnstable — Just a sophomore, he netted a hat trick for the Red Hawks in a 5-2 first-round win over Minnechaug.

Cam Melone, Hanover — The senior went for 5 points, scoring twice and assisting thrice in a 6-1 second-round win over Lynnfield.

Georgia Murray, Bishop Feehan — The junior scored a natural hat trick in the first period and finished with four goals in a 6-2 second-round win over Acton-Boxborough.

Celia Neilson, Bishop Fenwick — The senior captain contributed across the board, providing 23 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, and 8 steals for the top-seeded Crusaders in a 58-27 waxing of Wilmington.

Jackie Pohl and Jenna Oman, East Bridgewater — Pohl, a sophomore, and Oman, a junior, were everywhere in a 63-39 first-round win over Bellingham. Pohl finished with 20 points, 7 rebounds, and 8 assists, and Oman had 15 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 steals.

Attleboro High has a new football coach. Lamont Penn, a Bridgewater-Raynham assistant under Eian Bain, will take over the Bombardiers. They went 3-8 last year under Jim Winters, who helmed the program for four seasons, going 14-30.

Penn served as Norwood’s offensive coordinator from 2018-21. He was introduced to the team Friday.

Providence junior Jon Mignacca, a Bishop Feehan graduate from Seekonk, won the Big East high jump championship, clearing 6 feet, 8.25 inches (2.04 meters) to beat out UConn’s Enaji Muhammad (6-7).

▪ UMass Dartmouth sophomore Ancil Alexander, a Taunton graduate, was named Little East Conference Field Athlete of the Year for men’s indoor track after taking second at the LEC Championships in the shot put (51 feet, 3.75 inches). He won the event three times during the season.

▪ UMass Dartmouth freshman Michael Veegh, a Bishop Stang graduate from Tiverton (R.I.), was named Little East Conference men’s indoor track Rookie of the Year. He won the 400 at the LEC Championships (50.54 seconds) and was part of the second-place 4×400 relay (3:28.67). He was also named All-LEC first team.

▪ Keene State junior Tyler Bolaske, a Palmer graduate, was tabbed as the Little East Conference’s male Track Athlete of the Year after leading the Owls to their first indoor championship since 2008. Bolaske won the mile at the LEC Championships in 4:11 and was runner-up in the 800 (1:59.25).

Georgia Murray, Bishop Feehan, 4

Addy Harrington, Duxbury, 3

Levi McNally, Barnstable, 3

Riley Bergeron, Acton-Boxborough, 2

Brayden Boczenowski, Arlington Catholic, 2

Cate Buckler, Barnstable, 2

Abigail Burke, Notre Dame (H), 2

Payton Curran, Reading, 2

Hannah D’Angelo, Pembroke, 2

Luke Dickson, Medfield, 2

Colman Donohue, Hingham, 2

Will Doucette, Canton, 2

Ryan Elrick, Canton, 2

Jack McCourt, Catholic Memorial, 2

Cam McKenna, Hingham, 2

Cam Melone, Hanover, 2

Joe Pumphret, Winthrop, 2

Nolan Russell, Arlington, 2

Sabrina Stone, Milton, 2

Ella Sullivan, Pembroke, 2

Connor Hines, Hanover, 3

Cam Melone, Hanover, 3

Joe Ryan, Canton, 3

Teddy Shuman, Canton, 3

Abigail Burke, Notre Dame (H), 2

Kellen Labanara, Canton, 2

Hunter McClain, Bourne, 2

Sam Griswold, Concord-Carlisle, 44

Stephen Camara, Arlington Catholic, 33

Jackson Palmborg, Bourne, 26

Jaxson Fleming, Catholic Memorial, 24

Jim Lyman, Winthrop, 22

Colin McCarthy, St. John’s Shrewsbury, 21

Lydia Barnes, Methuen/Tewksbury, 18

Dom Conte, BC High, 18

John Snider, Arlington, 15

Vivienne Melo, Bishop Stang, 14

8. Basketball leaderboard

Allen Brown, Holbrook, 32

Cal Atherton, Newburyport, 31

Jacob Klass, Beverly, 30

Elian Rodriguez, Salem, 30

Mike Berry, Cape Cod Academy, 28

Elian Rodriguez, Salem, 28

Tyler Staiti, Abington, 28

Amelia Crowe, Pentucket, 27

Jag Garces, West Bridgewater, 27

Connor Chiarello, Swampscott, 26

Sysy Emmanuel, St. Mary’s, 26

Dom Taylor, Somerset Berkley, 26

Michael Cimetti, Hull, 25

Grant Neal, Lynnfield, 25

Teddy O’Neill, Swampscott, 25

Will Farrell, Pembroke, 24

Logan Volkringer, Plymouth South, 24

Celia Neilson, Bishop Fenwick, 23

Julian Allison-Cardoso, Dedham, 22

Mateo Jackson, Bridgewater-Raynham, 22

Tori White, Canton, 22

Tori Adams, Walpole, 21

Liam Conneely, Hull, 20

Jackie Pohl, East Bridgewater, 20

Kingston Maxwell, Abington, 15

Krem Amparo, Latin Academy, 14

Mateo Jackson, Bridgewater-Raynham, 14

Bella Bingham, Walpole, 13

Sadie Hartley-Matteson, Old Rochester, 13

Devyn Walsh, Pentucket, 13

A’laya Colbert, North Quincy, 12

Zade Garron Ciberay, Plymouth South, 12

Mike Ekweanya, New Mission, 11

Chase Groothuis, Swampscott, 11

Teddy O’Neill, Swampscott, 11

Brooke Connor, Canton, 10

Jenna Oman, East Bridgewater, 10

Hannah Thorell, Old Rochester, 10

Jackie Pohl, East Bridgewater, 8

Kingston Maxwell, Abington, 7

Jacob Klass, Beverly, 6

Celia Neilson, Bishop Fenwick, 6

Luke Tirrell, Bridgewater-Raynham, 6

Sydney Bosma, Old Rochester, 5

Cason Faulk, Bridgewater-Raynham, 5

Manny Valentino, New Mission, 5

Grace Goudreau, Seekonk, 4

Sadie Hartley-Matteson, Old Rochester, 4

Celia Neilson, Bishop Fenwick, 8

Emma Farrell, East Bridgewater, 6

Connor Chiarello, Swampscott, 5

Sienna Miranda, Seekonk, 4

Brooke Connor, Canton, 3

Zade Garron Ciberay, Plymouth South, 3

Brendan Kurie can be reached at brendan.kurie@globe.com. Follow him on X @BrendanKurie.

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Massachusetts

20k customers without power in Revere, Winthrop areas

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

20k customers without power in Revere, Winthrop areas

National Grid is reporting that roughly 20,000 customers are without power due to outages in the Winthrop and Revere areas.

The utility company’s live outages map shows that 10,753 customers are without power in the Revere area and 9,261 customers are without power in the Winthrop area as of 2:25 p.m. Saturday.

The Herald has reached out to National Grid for comment. The Herald has also reached out to Eversource for information regarding any outages in their service regions, where a Herald photographer has seen some outages. Eversource’s outage map did not display any major outages at 2:25 p.m.

This is a developing story.

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