The most innovative companies in economic development for 2026

Traditional economic development tends to focus on investments made and jobs created. For this year’s group of Most Innovative Companies—or in many cases, foundations or governments, in this case—the key performance indicator isn’t dollars spent, but connections made. Growth comes not from directing resources, but finding a better way to nurture what you already have. 

Governments found creative ways to unleash the potential of their residents, workers, and civil servants. The state of New Mexico, for example, made a first-in-the-nation move to subsidize childcare for all, giving working parents and families a leg up. In Illinois, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act offered a pathway for low-income residents to electrify homes and cut their bills, while the San Diego Unified School District used one of their underutilized assets—land—to help launch an effort to build thousands of units of housing for their staff. And in St. Louis, the Arts Place Initiative eases the path towards owning a place to live for local artists, giving creativity a new home.

Other organizations took a different approach to preserving local economics. Surfing nonprofit Save the Waves started the study of “surfonomics” and launched an insurance product to protect local economies built around key breaks. The Next California, an effort by the World Wildlife Foundation, seeded an agricultural shift in the Mississippi Delta, offering farmers a new opportunity amid a changing climate. And Brazil’s re.green tapped AI and high tech to restore Amazon rainforests, in part by bringing back sustainable, profitable hardwood harvests.

Sometimes, the best impact comes from simply bridging a gap. Ox Delivers, which makes electric trucks for shipping goods in rural Africa, gives small businesses a better route to market (and money). Nevada’s Lithium Loop initiative seeks to build a full-circle mining, processing and development pipeline to make batteries in the U.S. And the new Greater Futures Scholarship Fund from the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation offers a more comprehensive model of college scholarships hoping to give students a real leg up on getting into, and graduating from, college.

1. State of New Mexico

For making one of the most stubborn and trying costs for working parents disappear

From San Francisco to New York City, municipal support for subsidized childcare have become a buzzed-about big city policy. In New Mexico, the goal of universal childcare has already been achieved, addressing a key pillar of the affordability problem plaguing families and helping working parents get some breathing room. In the words of a state official, it’s “putting families at the center of your policymaking.”

Starting last November, every New Mexican family qualified for free, subsidized childcare, funded by an Early Childhood Trust Fund, currently paid for by oil and gas revenue. That’s a huge deal: it’s estimated that families in New Mexico spend $12,000 on average every year for childcare, and families nationwide can spend up to 16% of their income on childcare for a single child, according to the department of labor. 

In New Mexico, everyone qualifies, and the state helps support the increased demand by subsidizing higher wages for childcare workers. New Mexico also plans to invest in more than 1,000 child care sites to build out the infrastructure to support the program. 

Early results look promising. In the first month, about 7,000 children from 6,000 families enrolled in the program, 63% of whom were eligible but wouldn’t have qualified before, and more than 1,300 childcare providers received subsidies. 

2. The Next California/WWF

For supporting food safety and food systems while supercharging the Mississippi delta agricultural economy

The long-term toll of climate change is expected to hit farms hard, as flooding, drought, and extreme heat and weather collude to challenge any notion of agricultural certainty. To get ahead of that disruption to the food system, the World Wildlife Foundation decided to not just look at what is being lost, but what can be created. 

The Next California Initiative, a years-long vision to transform the mid-Mississippi Delta and bring new commodity crops to the region, hopes to literally and figuratively seed a new era of agriculture. By 2034, backers hope, 3% of the region’s crop will be more high value fruits, nuts, and specialty grains.

In partnership with local agriculture organizations, the WWF has spent years developing plans for spreading new crops across the region and laying the roadmap for new markets and logistics networks for growers. So far, a handful of pilots have been launched as part of the final phase of the project; for instance, switching to more profitable, specialty rices. In the years to come, the initiative hopes to set a template for climate resiliency and economic vibrancy. Three percent may seem small, but research shows that change could bring $3.2 billion more revenue to area farmers.

3. San Diego Unified School District

For shoring up public education by making housing more affordable for teachers

For teachers trying to work in downtown districts while paying increasingly high rents, the math often doesn’t add up. In California, ground zero for the nation’s affordability crisis, at least a third of educators are rent-burdened and struggle to pay for housing.

Late in 2025, San Diego’s school district decided if the city’s costly housing market wasn’t making room for teachers and other district employees, they would. School leadership announced they would be utilizing the district’s own unused properties to create 1,500 units of affordable housing. The plan calls for building housing on land that will stay in San Diego Unified School District hands, and offering more options for educators to cut the cost of living. Some of the proposed projects will include childcare centers, a further boost for working parents. 

“Building affordable housing, and the district retaining ownership of the land to collect annual lease revenue, strengthens our schools and the surrounding San Diego neighborhoods,” said Superintendent Fabi Bagula.

The school district has committed to building long term and based on the proposals in the works, would receive $504 million in revenue over the 99-year lease terms of these developments.

4. Greater Hartford Gives Foundation

For creating a scholarship program that addresses higher education’s increasingly high cost

Investing in education, long seen as the pathway to brighter futures and better outcomes, feels more like an investment than ever these days, considering the rising costs of college and for most, student loan debt. The average tuition has doubled in the last 30 years, and that’s not counting the rising cost of student housing. Roughly a third of college students in the past year have considered dropping out due to financial burdens.

The Greater Hartford Gives Foundation decided it was time that the concept of a scholarship evolved. The Connecticut nonprofit’s new Greater Futures Scholarship Program, in partnership with Hartford Promise, aims to be a more realistic, and holistic, means of supporting higher education. Students at Greater Hartford public schools will receive generous financial support—up to $100,000 over the course of four years—as well as up to a decade of additional support services including career coaching and training, mental health support, and financial assistance for books, laptops and emergency needs. 

While the scholarship doesn’t require students to study in state, it is expected to dramatically boost the fortunes of the region’s graduates, a significant portion of whom will stay.

The payoff? A study by the Parker Strategy Group found that over the course of a decade, with 100 students supported in each graduating class, the Greater Futures program would create 760 college graduates (50 with master’s degrees), $151 million contributed in additional local and state taxes, and entrepreneurial and investment success that would support and sustain 9,110 more jobs.

5. Lithium Loop

For funding the creation of a fully domestic lithium mining economy to supercharge EV and battery production in the U.S.

As the growth of renewable energy and EVs continues to gain momentum globally, the United States finds itself playing catch-up, especially to China, when it comes to mining and manufacturing the raw materials and finished goods behind this monumental shift. 

In Nevada, advocates for what’s called the Lithium Loop hope to start closing that gap. The plan, an effort supported by the governor’s office, state and local officials, and university partners, and backed by federal funding for the Nevada Tech Hub at University of Nevada-Reno, is to create and expand a closed circle for lithium-ion battery manufacturing, from digging up the materials to assembling and even recycling spent batteries, that becomes a “cradle to cradle” hub for the nation’s electrification and energy storage needs. Millions of dollars in funding for job training is flowing, and the Bureau of Land Management has approved two future lithium mines, Thacker Pass and Rhyolite Ridge.

The state has already become a hotbed for the domestic battery industry, with firms like Tesla and Redwood Materials. But now the potential of the Lithium Loop to help bolster production, and fill in increasing demand for utilities and AI data centers, promises to grow the industry, incubate startups, and create up to 50,000 new jobs by 2029.

6. Save the Waves Coalition

For insuring surf breaks—and the communities that rely on them—in the event of natural disasters

It’s not possible to get a doctorate in surfonomics. But according to work done by surfing nonprofit Save the Waves, studying the local economic benefit of popping up and dropping in can be a boon to protecting surf spots around the globe. 

Last September, Save the Waves released a study of the surf economy for Santa Cruz, California, breaking down the environmental risks, investment strategies, and benefits of the region’s $194 million annual surf economy. It’s work like this that has fueled the organization’s more ambitious economic effort around the $9.5 billion global surf economy, creating an insurance policy for surf breaks. 

The idea is to measure the impact of surfing on a local economy, create a local trust that would benefit the relevant stakeholders, then enact an insurance policy that would pay out everyone in the event of a storm or disaster.

Save the Waves has already set up such a system in El Salvador, enlisting global insurer Willis Towers Watson as a partner. Starting in 2026, the model will be up and running. It’s an idea the nonprofit hopes to expand across the oceans as a model for protecting local surf economics from the ravages of climate change.

7. OX Delivers

For a cheap electric truck that aids mobility in Rwanda, while making small businesses more profitable

A U.K. company that designed a bare-bones, easy-to-ship electric truck, OX Delivers seeks to solve a key conundrum for African farmers and entrepreneurs: with unstable, unaffordable, and uncertain transportation options, how can small businesses get goods to market?

It’s an important question. Globally, the Food and Agricultural Organization estimates this problem leads to $400 billion worth of food spoiling before ever reaching a buyer.

The OX, an electric truck with a 90-mile range that can be outfitted with cold storage, offers a cheaper, more reliable way to move goods. In Rwanda, where OX Delivers has created a service allowing farmers and merchants to rent space on these vehicles, it’s made formerly long, arduous journeys, sometimes on bicycle, far more efficient. So far, the company has signed up 5,000 customers since launching in 2021.

The company has faced challenging economics, despite signing a $163 million contract in December 2024 to add service in nearly a half-dozen new countries. But the firm’s acquisition in late February by Berekley Coachworks, which brings commitment to the mission, passion for the technology, and fresh resources, gives it a new runway for growth and expansion.

8. St. Louis Art Place Initiative

For finding a way to support a more thriving arts economy in a shrinking Midwestern metro

The challenge of an affordable lifestyle and the tenuous nature of federal funding has been a tough one-two punch to art and culture in our cities. In St. Louis, a new initiative seeks to transform what some many see as blight into home and creative spaces for aspiring creatives.

The Arts Place Initiative plans to turn vacant lots into affordable housing and creative space for artists. By cobbling together different grants, such as funding from the Community Development Administration, the initiative seeks to help pay a portion of the downpayment, with artists responsible for the mortgage, taxes, and insurance.

In the Gravois Park neighborhood, for example, a three-story home is being converted into residential units for low-to-moderate income artists, with a backyard accessory dwelling unit being turned into an artist-in-residence program space. In all, the Arts Place Initiative plans to build 20 homes for artists, co-designing the properties and seeking to prevent displacement and build wealth through homeownership. 

The push for new artists housing is part of a larger network of programs focused on investment in the arts. Additional efforts include diverting a portion of tourism tax to the Regional Arts Commission and creating a maker district on Delmar Boulevard. 

9. State of Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act

For typing utility improvements to bottom-line investments helping the budgets and health of low-income residents

In a clever spin on the phrase “power to the people,” Illinois lawmakers have figured out a novel and successful formula that not only pushed utilities to be better public servants and cut their emissions, but also uses this cudgel to directly improve the lives of low-income utility clients.

The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, passed in 2021, mandates that utilities in the state cut electricity consumption; paying for home electrification, including electric stoves and heat pumps, counts for that reduction. That’s why the law has become a prime engine for low-income electrification across the state; residents can get more efficient heaters, new cooling systems, and electric ranges that reduce indoor air pollution.

More than 700 homes have benefitted from whole-house electrification in just the past three years, with zero costs upfront. As the program drives down electricity use and cuts pollution, it also helps state residents lock-in cheaper electricity bills, at a time when rising energy costs have become a key political issue.

Pairing the effort with solar and battery storage can save even more. With cuts and cancellations to federal programs for energy efficiency and green retrofits, these kinds of state-level solutions become even more important.

10. Re.green

For using AI and an economic development model to help restore the Amazonian rainforest

Considering the importance of the Amazon rainforest to our global climate, it’s clear not all forests are created equal. As Brazilian firm re.green sees it, not all forest restorations projects are created equal, either.

Utilizing a unique technology and analytics model, fusing AI, satellite imagery, and seed-planting drones to figure out the most cost-effective, sustainable spots for forest restoration, re.green believes it can be much more effective at replanting and managing carbon credits. By planting in degraded farmland that used to be rainforests, re.green seeks to reverse the great decline of this crucial biome. And with its commitment to native hardwood species–it works with nearly two dozen partner nurseries–it creates sustainable, harvestable wood that can bolster business and jobs for local communities. 

To date, Re.green has restored nearly 100,000 acres, planted more than 6 million seedlings, and created hundreds of local jobs. In 2025, the company not only won the prestigious Earthshot Prize for its sustainability efforts, but also landed a massive deal with Microsoft to restore 82,000 acres of forest and signed a $15 million deal with the Brazilian development bank.

Explore the full 2026 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 720 honorees that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 59 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more.