With its business-friendly regulations and policies, it’s no surprise Florida is an attractive place to build a business and in fact leads the nation in new business formations, according to US Census Bureau Data. Now business leaders in South Florida and around the state are rallying around a relatively new initiative, Ambition Accelerated, that is meant to build up the industries offering the greatest opportunities for growth and impact.
To that end, this month, The Florida Council of 100, its Foundation and its partners that include eMerge Americas kicked off four cohorts this month with 46 early-stage tech companies building in FinTech, DefenseTech, HealthTech and Resilience.
“Florida’s next chapter will be defined by the companies we help build here,” said Mike Simas, President and CEO of The Florida Council of 100, the statewide economic development-oriented organization of business leaders behind the effort. “Through Beyond Sunshine, we identified where Florida can lead. Ambition Accelerated puts that strategy to work, mobilizing our business community to help founders win customers, attract investment and build companies that strengthen Florida’s economy for the long term.”
The 46 founders selected for this year’s four cohorts hail from across Florida, seven other states and five countries. Over eight weeks, they will have access to more than 75 Florida CEOs, receive executive coaching from Embarc Collective, and have opportunities to connect with potential customers. Each Ambition Accelerated track is based in a region where its founders are able to find the customers and expertise needed to scale.
South Florida, which kicked off the effort in 2025 as the Gold Coast Accelerator, hosts two of the cohorts. FinTech founders will work from West Palm Beach, which is part of a Southeast Florida finance and insurance sector that generates more than $30 billion in GDP. It shouldn’t be surprising that the track for FinTech – for years South Florida’s strongest startup vertical as measured by venture capital activity – would also lure the most companies. Indeed, 9 of the 12 companies in the FinTech cohort are from the tri-county area.
A newer emphasis in #MiamiTech is Defense Tech, where military and defense support more than 73,000 jobs. Melissa Medina, CEO of eMerge Americas, remarked that this year’s Dual-Use and Defense Tech cohort, based in Miami, is tackling important challenges from securing critical underwater infrastructure and improving space traffic management to advancing energy autonomy and developing new AI capabilities.
“Florida has a tremendous opportunity to lead at the intersection of technology, national security, and entrepreneurship,” said Medina, in a statement to Refresh Miami. “Through Ambition Accelerated, eMerge Americas is proud to help connect these founders with industry leaders, customers, and investors who can accelerate the path from innovation to deployment, scale their businesses, and bring these technologies to market. Ultimately, these connections will help build the next generation of technology companies in Florida while strengthening our state’s position as a national hub for dual-use innovation.”
Elsewhere, the HealthTech founders will work from Tampa Bay, where health services, biotech and medtech support more than 240,000 jobs in the region. Resilience founders work from Babcock Ranch, where the team behind America’s first solar-powered town built an entire community from the ground up.
To be sure, the accelerator programs kick off as South Florida celebrates several major developments, including Ken Griffin’s gift to Carnegie Mellon University for a new Miami campus and Stephen M. Ross’s gift to Vanderbilt University for a graduate campus in West Palm Beach.
Meet the 19 South Florida startups that were selected to participate (descriptions provided by Ambition Accelerated):
FinTech
AHG Pay (West Palm Beach, founder: Drew Brasiel) – AHG Pay is the payments partner that grows your revenue, and was built for the businesses other processors turn away.
DubPay(Miami and Brazil, founder: Mauricio Seixas) – DubPay is a Brazilian payment technology company providing secure, scalable, and compliant payment processing solutions for businesses and digital platforms.
MicroFinance Pro (West Palm Beach, founder: Lionel Aluka) – MicroFinance Pro brings the unbanked into the digital financial ecosystem, making communities bankable, local lenders investment-ready and global investment transparent.
Movik (Miami, founder: Tomas Shuk) – It is an autonomous operating system for inland transportation.
PayFlex (Miami and Uruguay, founder: Fausto Friedrich): PayFlex is building the financial wellbeing platform for America’s frontline workforce, combining interest- and fee-free earned wage access through a subscription model with an AI-powered financial and wellbeing agent available directly on WhatsApp and iMessage.
Payslice (Miami, founder: Brian Gerrard) – Payslice is embedded fintech infrastructure that lets payroll and fintech companies offer their users instant, earned wage access in any currency, including stablecoins.
RangersAI (Boca Raton, founder: Ayelet Biger-Levin) – RangersAI helps financial institutions empower their customers to face online scams with confidence through an AI powered scam resilience platform that combines real time guidance, education, and practical tools.
Stingray Technology Solutions (Delray Beach, founder: Liam Lafferty) – Stingray Technology Solutions provides Nexus, and services that encompass it. Nexus is an AI native, tenant hosted integration platform that allows for the fast creation of small, targeted software.
Wamy AI (Miami, founder: Edgar Harutyunyan) – AI claim analyst for P&C insurance claims.
Dual-Use and Defense Tech
ARSOFT US (Miami, founder: Aidan DeLellis) – ARSOFT US turns complex industrial and clinical workflows into immersive XR experiences – enabling teams to author their own training, guide field work with AI-powered AR, plan surgeries from 3D medical scans, and build living digital twins from LiDAR, sensors, and real-time data.
Earendel (Aventura, founder: Ryan Conlan) – Earendel is an energy autonomy platform providing operational energy decision intelligence and unmanned power to defense customers in distributed autonomous operations.
Reef Arches (West Palm Beach, founder: Nick Bourdon) – A coastal defense company protecting critical infrastructure & shorelines from erosion & building Florida’s marine habitat with novel infrastructure products.
Supply Veins (Miami, founder: Charles Masters Rodriguez) – Supply Veins is the AI-native operating system for dual-use manufacturers to build, manage, and scale resilient supply chains.
HealthTech:
AVENTUSOFT (Boca Raton, founder: Kaustubh Kale) – Aventusoft is a MedTech company delivering HEMOTAG a full-spectrum heart failure monitoring system that combines novel noninvasive cardiac function monitoring and an CarePear AI-powered patient intelligence platform across hospital, clinic, and home care.
PoiesisMedical (Jupiter, founder: Gregory Wiita) – Poiesis Medical is a urology-focused life sciences company advancing VerdeFend, an MD Anderson-licensed, non-antibiotic bladder health platform designed to reduce bacterial burden and disrupt biofilm before infection becomes established.
SisaTech AI (Miami, founder: Krishan Punia) – SIVIA Medical reconstructs fragmented medical records into a complete, chronological patient timeline to deliver guideline-based clinical intelligence for specialists managing complex cardio-renal-metabolic disease.
Resilience:
Just Cool It (Miami, founder: Tim Sperry) – Just Cool It is building the Cooling Renewal Coatings category with CoolCrete® RENEW and HeatROI AI, combining advanced materials and property intelligence to cool, protect, and extend the life of buildings and infrastructure.
Sealor (Sunny Isles Beach, founder: Alexander Suma) – Sealor is building a new category of biogenic materials that harness nature’s mineral-forming intelligence to protect coastal infrastructure from the ground up.
WildlifeOS | CrocAlarm (Miami, founder: Rodolfo Saccoman) – WildlifeOS is building the intelligence layer for wildlife risk, starting with CrocAlarm, a sonar-first AI early-warning system designed to detect alligators and crocodiles in murky waterways before they surface.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- It’s a deal, #MiamiTech! Carnegie Mellon to open a Wynwood campus
- Up, up, up: South Florida on way to another strong VC year, PitchBook’s Q3 report shows
- Palantir plants its HQ flag in Miami
- Brazil-based digital bank Nu prepares to start US operations, building from its US headquarters in South Florida
- a16z plants American Dynamism base in West Palm Beach
- Brazil’s innovative Link School of Business to launch in Miami, drawn by the area’s rising tech scene
- Google more than quadruples its office space in Miami – who’s next?
Hea
- Ambition Accelerated kicks off statewide accelerator in key sectors. Here are the 19 South Florida startups selected – October 13, 2026
- Up, up, up: South Florida on way to another strong VC year, PitchBook’s Q3 report shows – October 8, 2026
- 8+ things to know in #MiamiTech: Mana Tech to launch Tech Cities of America; FAU reels in quantum grant; plus news from Global Ventures, HighPost Capital, PlanHub, Calculum, job opportunities & more – October 7, 2026
