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poweredUP returns as Tampa’s tech sector ramps
“Tampa Bay has been an underrated ecosystem for a long time.”
As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and investment continues flowing into Florida, Tampa Bay Tech’s poweredUP conference is returning May 20 with a central question driving much of the region’s growing innovation economy: What does it look like for Tampa Bay to win as Tampa Bay in the tech sector?
The annual conference, presented by A-LIGN and hosted at the Mahaffey Theater, is expected to bring together more than 1,000 business leaders, founders, investors and technology professionals from across the region. Organizers say the event is focused less on comparing Tampa Bay to Silicon Valley or Austin and more on understanding the region’s own strengths in cybersecurity, AI, defense, healthcare innovation and enterprise software.
“Tampa Bay has been an underrated ecosystem for a long time,” said Meghan O’Keefe, executive director of Tampa Bay Tech. “Post-Covid, people started moving here and bringing their businesses here,” she added. “We have people building really cool things. There’s a lot of collaboration between businesses here that other ecosystems don’t have.”
O’Keefe pointed to the region’s industry diversity, MacDill Air Force Base and the University of South Florida’s growing AI initiatives as advantages for Tampa Bay’s technology sector.
Artificial intelligence will dominate much of this year’s event programming, with sessions focused on workforce transformation, enterprise AI adoption and cybersecurity.
But O’Keefe said many companies are still struggling to move beyond experimentation. “It’s still the wild wild west,” she said. “People are understanding more the governance of AI and how to introduce it into their companies.
“It starts at the ground: with data.”
The conference will also feature a keynote from Brett Winton, chief futurist at ARK Invest, who will discuss technologies expected to reshape the global economy over the next decade, including AI, robotics and advanced computing.
One of the day’s marquee discussions, “Building Billion-Dollar Companies in Tampa Bay,” will bring together leaders from Webull, A-LIGN and TENEX.AI to discuss scaling major companies locally.
According to O’Keefe, one of the region still has one major problem: “We’re getting more investment in companies here than ever,” she said. “But a lot of the investments are not coming from local businesses, organizations and individuals.”
For the first time, poweredUP will also include a hiring event connecting employers directly with local talent seeking opportunities in AI, cybersecurity, technology and operations roles. Organizers say the addition reflects growing demand for workforce development as AI rapidly changes the labor market.
poweredUP 2026 Presented by A-LIGN
Date: May 20, 2026
Location: Duke Energy Center for the Arts – Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg
Schedule
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Hiring Event
11:00 a.m. | Networking & Geek Row
12:00 p.m. | Main stage programming begins
4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. | Radically Connected® Happy Hour
Featured sessions
- Tampa Bay’s Innovation Economy
- Workforce in the Age of AI
- Building Billion-Dollar Companies in Tampa Bay
- From Pilot to Production: Scaling AI in the Enterprise
- AI & Cybersecurity: Autonomous Defense
- AI Roast: Prompting Best Practices
Registration
Register for powerUP 2026 here.
