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Newsletter — Issue 20 — June 18, 2026
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This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.
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The Innovation Vision · Section II
Colorado's Unique and Compelling Strengths as an Innovation Ecosystem
This Engage Colorado Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team. The Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future Coalition did not review and has not endorsed this Engage Colorado Newsletter.
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This newsletter continues the section-by-section walk through The Innovation Vision for Colorado — picking up at Section II: Colorado's Unique and Compelling Strengths as an Innovation Ecosystem.
Section I laid out the Vision itself:
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Colorado will be the most attractive innovation ecosystem in the world — and every Coloradan will share in the economic and cultural prosperity that leadership creates.
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Section II answers the question that immediately follows: why is this Vision realistically achievable, and not just aspirational?
The answer is that Colorado already has the foundation. For most geographies, this Vision would be out of reach. For Colorado, the work of the next twenty years is to extend, deepen, and accelerate what has been built over the last many decades. Few states or countries could pursue this Vision from where they currently stand. Colorado can.
A note on authorship: As with the broader Innovation Vision, I led the preparation of this section. It has not been formally reviewed nor endorsed by the full coalition that signed The Open Letter.
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The Setting
Colorado begins from a place few states in the world can claim. Mountain ranges, high plains, and three hundred days of sunshine define a setting in which outdoor activity — skiing, hiking, climbing, biking, fishing, paddling — is part of ordinary life for Coloradans rather than a brand marketed on weekends. For more than a century, this combination has drawn talented and ambitious people from every corner of the country and from around the world.
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The Cultural Life
The cultural life of the state is disproportionate to its size. Colorado hosts professional teams across all four major American sports leagues — plus Major League Soccer and, beginning in 2026, the National Women's Soccer League — and Red Rocks Amphitheatre offers one of the most distinctive summer concert calendars in the country.
The state's place in film, music, and ideas culture is among the strongest outside New York and Los Angeles:
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• The Aspen Ideas Festival each summer, and the Telluride Film Festival and Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience each Labor Day weekend
• The Bolder Boulder 10K each Memorial Day — one of the largest road races in the United States; the Pikes Peak Marathon, founded in 1956 and the oldest continually held marathon in the country, summiting a 14,115-ft peak; and the Leadville Trail 100 MTB, one of the most renowned 100-mile mountain bike races in the world
• Beginning in 2027, the Sundance Film Festival, relocating to Boulder after four decades in Park City
• The Boulder Roots Music Fest and Denver's Outside Days — meaningful additions to a state cultural calendar that gives Colorado depth comparable to metropolitan regions many times its size
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Colorado's pro-sports franchises — the Denver Broncos, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Rockies, Colorado Rapids, and the newly launched Denver Summit FC — draw deep, loyal fanbases across the state. The Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2022 and the Nuggets won the NBA Championship in 2023, both backed by sellout crowds at Ball Arena. The Broncos fill Empower Field at Mile High weekend after weekend — with a new privately funded retractable-roof stadium at Burnham Yard set to open in 2031, anchoring a 100-plus-acre mixed-use district just southeast of the current site. Coors Field has been one of the most consistent home draws in Major League Baseball since it opened in 1995. Denver Summit FC launched in 2026 as the NWSL's 16th franchise — debuting at Empower Field at Mile High, with a 14,500-seat purpose-built stadium opening in 2028.
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The Innovation Economy
Built on that foundation, Colorado has developed one of the most concentrated innovation economies in the world:
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302,000+
Technology workers
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$106B+
Tech gross state product
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3rd
Highest tech concentration in the U.S.
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Two major research universities, four federal laboratories (NREL, NCAR, NIST, and NOAA), and a globally connected international airport extend the state's institutional capacity. The greater Denver–Boulder corridor has recently produced dozens of unicorns and public-market exits across software, life sciences, aerospace, quantum, energy, and digital infrastructure.
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The Breadth Across Sectors
The breadth of Colorado's existing innovation strength is the most distinctive part of the foundation. Colorado holds globally significant positions across:
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Aerospace and Space
Major federal anchors (Buckley Space Force Base, Peterson Space Force Base, the U.S. Air Force Academy) and established primes (Lockheed Martin Space, United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems — formerly Ball Aerospace), alongside a fast-growing roster including Boom Supersonic, Sierra Space, Voyager Technologies, Lunar Outpost, York Space Systems, Ursa Major, Advanced Space, and Radia.
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AI and Digital Infrastructure
Zayo and Lumen are North America's co-leaders in bandwidth; major data-center operators Vantage, Crusoe, CoreSite, Cologix, H5 Data Centers, and Stack Infrastructure headquartered in Colorado.
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Quantum Technology
A U.S. Department of Commerce Tech Hub designation anchored by Elevate Quantum, and more commercial-stage quantum companies than any other geography in the world: Atom Computing (Boulder), Quantinuum (Broomfield, Nasdaq: QNT), Infleqtion (Louisville, NYSE: INFQ), and IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), with a new Boulder R&D facility — plus Maybell Quantum, Vescent, and Bifrost Electronics in the hardware stack.
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Life Sciences and Medical Technology
Anchored by the Anschutz Medical Campus, UCHealth, and Children's Hospital Colorado, complemented by Boulder's biotech ecosystem; including Edgewise Therapeutics, Enveda Biosciences, SomaLogic, and Watchmaker Genomics, alongside large-scale players DaVita, Medtronic, Terumo BCT, and Agilent.
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Energy
NREL's clean-energy research alongside a fast-growing private base: Solid Power, Peak Energy, and Forge Nano in batteries; Koloma in geologic hydrogen; Electra in clean iron; Travertine, Endolith, and Alta Resource Technologies in critical minerals; and Uplight and Project Canary in grid software and emissions measurement.
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Agtech and Regenerative Agriculture
Boulder's natural-organic cluster (the lineage that produced WhiteWave, Celestial Seasonings, and Justin's) alongside the Savory Institute, Mad Agriculture, and the MASA Seed Foundation in regenerative agriculture; anchored by Colorado State University and the CSU Spur campus.
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Outdoor and Recreation Industry
Home to the Outdoor Industry Association and the two largest mountain-resort operators in North America (Vail Resorts, Broomfield, NYSE: MTN, parent of the Epic Pass; and Alterra Mountain Company, Denver, parent of the Ikon Pass); a deep brand roster including VF Corporation (parent of The North Face, Vans, Timberland), Crocs, OtterBox, Big Agnes, and fast-growing newcomers like Halfdays and Owl.AI; plus the X Games, now led by Colorado's own Jeremy Bloom; and Robin Thurston's Outside Inc., the world's leading creator of outdoor and adventure content.
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The Momentum
The momentum matches the depth. Venture capital deployed in Colorado reached $7.46 billion in 2025 — the second-highest year in the state's history — with new companies forming in sectors that did not exist a decade ago.
The engine Colorado has built over the past several decades is real, and it is running. The task before the state's leaders is to ensure it accelerates rather than stalls — and to use the foundation already in place to deliver on this Vision.
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Why This Matters
The strength of this foundation is what makes The Honest Assessment both more troubling and more correctable. Colorado is not declining because it lacks the assets. It is losing momentum because of choices — and the choices can be reversed.
Section III of the Innovation Vision — covered in next Tuesday's Engage Colorado newsletter — walks through the self-inflicted and correctable headwinds slowing this foundation today.
The full text of The Innovation Vision for Colorado is published at visionforcolorado.org. The diagnostic companion, The Honest Assessment, is published at thehonestassessment.com. The Open Letter that gave rise to both is published at ensuringcolorado.com.
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