Mahoning Valley fund receives $3M grant to help high-tech businesses

YOUNGSTOWN — The state awarded a $3 million grant to a Mahoning Valley investment fund to support high-tech companies.

The Ohio Third Frontier Commission announced Thursday that Valley Growth Ventures received the grant.

VGV is a for-profit investment fund partnership of the Youngstown Business Incubator, the Tech Belt Energy Innovation Center in Warren, Youngstown State University and the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp.

VGV focuses on providing seed money to start-ups in business-to-business software, additive manufacturing, energy, clean-tech and advanced materials firms. It attempts to attract companies from outside the Mahoning Valley to come to the area, but can make investments to companies across the state.

The Ohio Third Frontier is the state’s $2 billion technology-based economic development initiative to create high-wage jobs through the accelerated growth of high-tech start-up and early-stage companies.

The Third Frontier awards will be used to make direct investments in Ohio based technology companies over the next three years.