Redlands, California-based geospatial technology company Esri says it will collaborate with local startups via a new office it has opened at the T-REX downtown incubator.
Esri said Wednesday it has opened an outpost inside T-REX’s Geospatial Innovation Center, expanding its footprint in the St. Louis region. The geospatial giant also operates offices in St. Charles and the Cortex innovation district.
A spokeswoman for Esri said the company has three employees based at the T-REX office and working with local startups. Esri has a five-year lease for the office, which is about 500 square feet, the spokeswoman said.
At T-REX, Esri will provide startups in the Geospatial Innovation Center with technology tools and resources through its Esri Startup program, which gives qualified companies access to its ArcGIS Developers software tools for free. The company's startup program is designed to help companies include mapping technology and location intelligence components into the products they develop. Startups in the program are provided access to free cloud services, training, software and support. The program is open to startups operating in the defense, data analytics, smart city, drone, artificial intelligence and extended reality (XR) fields. Esri said several St. Louis companies have already enrolled in the program.
"The Geospatial Innovation Center at T-REX is the inspiring next step in St. Louis's transformation into a global center for geospatial ingenuity and development," said Tara Mott, St. Louis-based National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) account manager at Esri, in a statement. "Esri's presence in this space represents a great opportunity to work with the best and brightest geospatial minds in St. Louis. We're looking forward to joining the folks at T-REX to help up-and-coming developers shape the future of location intelligence technology.”
T-REX’s Geospatial Innovation Center, a 16,000-square-foot space on the incubator’s fourth floor, opened in 2020 and has more than two dozen geospatial companies operating there.
"Esri is a world leader in the geospatial industry, and having them participate with us in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship will be critical to the development of new companies, geospatial talent, and geosolutions for the region and for our nation. Esri's ability to advance innovation within the geospatial industry is key to what we are building in the St. Louis region,” said Mark Tatgenhorst, Geospatial Innovation Center program director.
In addition to its startup program, Esri said it will offer workshops at the Geospatial Innovation Center. The company said it plans to collaborate with T-REX on its incubator’s new Extended Reality and Simulation Lab, which will be located inside the Geospatial Innovation Center. The extended reality project is being backed with a $500,000 federal grand.
Founded in 1969, privately held Esri provides software used by 350,000 organizations worldwide. The company has 103 employees in the St. Louis region and recently added a new technical support center at its St. Charles regional office.
Esri’s new office in T-REX comes as the nonprofit incubator continues focus on advancing geospatial technology in St. Louis. On Friday, the NGA officially opened its new Moonshot Labs, its first unclassified innovation center, inside T-REX.
