Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community

More on the whole “talking more than doing” and “not even including startups” front, did you hear that there’s a new roundtable to talk about more things and stuff…? More talking. More discussing. More roundtabling. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has launched a thing called the Central City Roundtable. It’s a group of civic leaders tasked with carrying forward the “All in on Portland’s Central City” vision — you know, the one that came out of the Governor’s Central City Task Force in 2025, naturally.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Mayor Keith Wilson on improving Portland’s central city – Portland Business Journal

There are some bright spots among ongoing challenges in downtown Portland. Investors are finding deals as distressed office buildings trade hands at steep discounts, tenants are affirming their dedication to leasing office space and foot traffic is on the rise. But there’s still work to be done.

I know. I know. You’ve just spent more time than you expected rooting for your NCAA basketball tourney bracket. I get it. But you know what’s better than your alma mater…? Everybody’s alma mater. Together. Combining forces. And now, it’s happening in hackathon form. Meet HackUP.

You know how much I love it when folks outside of our region recognize the talent from our region. Like when a Portland startup gets picked for a national startup accelerator program. That’s what happened with Fordje (pronounced “forj”) — the Portland startup building an AI platform that clarifies city-specific climate, fire, and zoning codes for the construction industry. They were just selected for the third cohort of the Cox Cleantech Accelerator.

No jokes. Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Portland Council to take up business license tax exemption – Portland Business Journal

The proposal would raise the exemption to $75,000 for the 2026 tax year and to $100,000 starting in 2027 tax year. The proposal is being brought forward by Mayor Keith Wilson and council member Eric Zimmerman.

You know what’s fun about blogging about the same community for nearly two decades? You’ve got receipts. A lot of them. Like more than 6,000 posts worth of receipts. So I’ve started doing something with all of those receipts. Every day — or at least most days — I’m posting a “On this Day in Portland Startup History” on the Portland Startups Slack.

Speaking of startup accelerators, our friends at Oregon AI Accelerator — the inaugural startup accelerator program for AI focused startups — is holding its first ever demo day on May 14, 2026. And you’re invited. Or, I mean, at least I’m inviting you. It may be sold out by now. But still… give it a shot.

While I was researching the top 10 Silicon Florist posts for Q1 2026, something dawned on me: The Oregon AI Accelerator revealing its inaugural cohort was the second most-read story of the quarter. And there’s talk of a new accelerator program joining the Portland startup community, soon. As well as a couple of new PIE experiments that have popped up out of nowhere. Which all collided in my brain and got me to wondering: How many incubators and accelerators has Portland actually tried over the years? And perhaps a distant second: How many of them had I covered over the past two decades…?

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Lytics founder’s new startup is Antfly, AI-powered search – Portland Business Journal

“Our idea was like, ‘Hey, people need access to this kind of dark data, this multimodal data,’” McDermott said. “(And) we should build all these capabilities into the database. So let’s make one kind of unified system to index and retrieve all this information that your (AI) agent will need to make a good answer. And let’s build an entirely new system that’s designed natively for these AI use cases.”