From Silicon Valley to the Ohio River Valley
Cincy AI Week · Fireside Chat · June 2026 · Over-the-Rhine
From Silicon Valley
to the Ohio River Valley.
Cincinnati hosted a national conversation on capital and compute at Cincy AI Week, as two leaders who have built at the frontier of both turned their attention to the heartland's place in the AI economy.
The Conversation
Entrepreneurship beyond LLMs.
The premise of the fireside chat was a deliberate provocation: the AI economy is bigger than large language models. Dinesh Maheshwari and Tyler Mantel explored what entrepreneurship looks like beyond the LLM layer, where the durable value of the AI era is being built: in silicon and inference economics, in applied AI for real industries, and in the capital structures that decide which builders get funded and where.
It was a pairing built for the topic. One speaker has engineered the compute that AI runs on. The other deploys the capital that decides where it gets built.
The Compute
Dinesh Maheshwari
Former CTO · Groq
As former Chief Technology Officer at Groq, Maheshwari helped pioneer the inference hardware powering the AI era. He brought a frontier view of where compute, silicon, and AI infrastructure are headed, and what that means for founders building beyond the model layer.
The Capital
Tyler Mantel
Roll Tack Ventures
A two-time founder turned venture investor, Mantel leads Roll Tack Ventures, backing startups that solve mission-critical problems driving GDP growth in America's heartland. His thesis: the Midwest's businesses are exactly where applied AI creates real economic value.
The Gap
The heartland powers the economy. The capital hasn't followed. Yet.
One imbalance framed the entire conversation. The Midwest produces a massive share of American economic output, yet captures only a sliver of the venture capital that funds the next generation of companies. The AI era is a chance to close that gap, because the industries AI will transform most, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, and consumer brands, are concentrated here.
20%+
Of U.S. GDP is generated by the Midwest
~3%
Of venture funding reaches the region
Front and Center
Cincinnati's opportunities and barriers, on a national stage.
This was not a conversation about the coasts that happened to take place in Ohio. Cincinnati's opportunities and barriers were front and center, examined honestly by leaders working to position Ohio at the forefront of the AI economy.
The Opportunity
Real industries, real problems, real proof
The next wave of AI value comes from applying intelligence to the physical and operational economy. That economy lives in the Ohio River Valley, giving founders here customers, use cases, and proof points that coastal startups have to fly in to find.
The Barrier
Capital access and density
Talent and ideas are here. The friction is capital: fewer local funds, fewer late-stage checks, and a funding culture still calibrated to coastal patterns. Closing that gap is the work of firms, institutions, and civic leaders together.
The Position
Ohio at the forefront of the AI economy
With AI Ready Ohio scaling statewide, an AI super sector strategy from JobsOhio, and a community that convenes national conversations like this one, Ohio is assembling the pieces: people, compute, capital, and the coalition to connect them.
The models will commoditize. The compute will spread. The lasting question is where the builders and the capital choose to meet.
The conversation, in a sentence
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