One of Birmingham’s own edtech companies was a winner in a national defense competition.
Birmingham-based QuantHub was named one of six winners in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Building an Adaptive and Competitive Workforce Track through the Tools Competition.
The award includes $150,000 in funding, a 12-month impact evaluation conducted by Georgia State University and global recognition as a leader in edtech.
Founded in 2018, QuantHub is a workforce development and educational technology company focused on increasing data and AI literacy among individuals of all ages and industries.
Josh Jones, CEO of QuantHub, said winning this recognition is a point of pride for him and his team.
"Being recognized by such a prestigious entity as being best in class is really going to help us when it comes to selling to other government agencies,” Jones said.
Application requirements for the competition included submitting an idea focused on improving teaching data and AI skills to learners of all ages. QuantHub's idea involved taking its adaptive learning platform that’s hyper-tailored to each individual learner and using generative AI to continue to provide new features and increase educational advocacy on the platform.
Jones said the competition allowed him and his team an opportunity to share what their methods are for increasing data and AI literacy throughout Alabama.
“You have to be prepared for the fact that what you learned 10 or 20 years ago isn’t going to be relevant in five or 10 years,” he said. “Our vision is to put tools in the hands of every worker that enables them to be ready for and to take full advantage of the changes that are coming in technology and across industries.”
To help strengthen the workforce pipeline, QuantHub is partnering with local schools and educational institutions to incorporate data literacy into their curriculum. QuantHub has partnered with Alabama K-12 and the State Department of Education; they also recently announced a partnership with Lawson State Community College and Jefferson State Community College to pilot our new AI-driven assessment tool within their classrooms.
“I think educators everywhere at every age level are having to rethink what it means to prepare students to be career ready,” Jones said. “It speaks to the forward thinking and innovative appetite of these universities and community colleges to want to lean into this type of opportunity to ensure that their students get access to cutting-edge training.”
Jones said he hopes the work with these institutions, as well as QuantHub’s internship program that connects students around Alabama with employers and businesses in Birmingham to provide them with professional experience, will make Alabama a better place for both employers and new professionals.
"We're providing not just the data and AI skills education at an early age, but also that bridge to the industry and helping the talent ensure that they get the skills that they need,” Jones said. “For Alabama to grow from an economic development standpoint and to be competitive as a state, we have to show outside companies that are considering moving here that we’re preparing our workforce for those AI-enabled jobs and building the tech-enabled workforce pipeline.”
