Before there is an idea, there has to be a spark. That is how Mike Seper, the lead for Missouri Innovation Week and the Innovate USA Summit and Expo, frames the ambition behind Missouri Innovation Week, a first-of-its-kind statewide celebration of emerging technology and STEM careers that lands in St. Louis from October 13 to 17, 2026.
Seper did not set out to build a week-long festival. He stepped in when he saw a hole in the region's fall calendar. STL Startup Week is not happening this year, and Seper wrote that he wanted to offer something bigger than St. Louis, built for everyone from successful business owners to aspiring entrepreneurs and early-stage idea people. That left a gap, and Seper got to work filling it with something bigger than a single city or a single audience.
"It's focused on early stage innovators and helping aspiring entrepreneurs be able to launch new ventures, new products, bring something to the market, employ new people in our region, and be able to upskill for workforce development," Seper told St. Louis Magazine. "We want to focus on education, helping people learn emerging technologies, AI, to empower them to start building."
The anchor of the week is the Innovate USA Summit & Expo, which runs October 13 through 15 at The Post Building in St. Louis. The summit is built around interactive exhibits, live demonstrations, and training sessions designed to connect students with careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Community Access Passes start at $99, and organizers have set aside $25,000 in Innovate USA Expo scholarships so students can attend at no cost.
For Seper, the mission is personal. He grew up in south St. Louis, he wrote in a LinkedIn post, with no one around him who had ever built a product, started a business, or invested their time trying to make the city better. He filled an old spiral notebook with ideas instead. "I had a lot of people that believed in me when I was young, before I believed in myself," he told UMSL. "Now it's my turn to pay that opportunity forward to the next generation."
That pay-it-forward instinct shapes the programming. Students of different ages are meant to see how recent advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, and virtual reality apply to real-world problems, and to discover what piques their interest. "Students have better tools than any of us ever had," Seper said. "So, let's teach them how to use those tools and how they can be on a good path that helps for workforce development and positions our region for long-term success."
One of the week's biggest draws is a series of student robotics and drone demonstrations presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation. Attendees watch student-built robots in action and high-flying drone showcases while learning about skills that can lead to careers in the growing technology sector. Dan Mantz, the foundation's CEO, is among the featured speakers, and the organization is bringing its world championship robotics and drone competition to St. Louis next year. That event, the RECF World Championship, is scheduled for April 25 through May 7, 2027, and is expected to attract students from around the world.
The week also carries a strong civic thread. The Innovate USA Civic AI Hackathon, presented by Scale AI and UMSL, is free and open to everyone, from first-time builders to experienced teams. City of St. Louis leaders present real community challenges, and builders in three divisions — K-12, University, and Community — develop technical solutions for a stronger city. The hackathon kicks off at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13, at the close of the summit, with teams working at T-REX, at UMSL, and virtually. It finishes at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, at a Hackathon Finish Line Celebration with the RECF. Organizers frame the 33.5-hour build in the spirit of the Spirit of St. Louis — the same flight time Charles Lindbergh needed to cross from the United States to France in 1927.
That historical echo runs through the whole event. The Innovate USA website notes that nearly a century ago, nine leaders gathered in St. Louis to fund The Spirit of St. Louis because they believed in a 25-year-old pilot with an ambitious dream to make the first transatlantic flight. "This October, leaders will gather once again to help the next generation with bold ideas take flight," the site reads.
The modern version of that bet is the Spirit of St. Louis AI Innovation Center, a public-private hub founded with NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services, Google, World Wide Technology, Overture Maps Foundation, and WEKA, and administered by GeoSTL. Mark Munsell, GeoSTL's executive director and the former chief AI officer and CTO of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, will deliver the center's first public presentation during the summit. A panel on harnessing AI infrastructure for good features founding members of the center, including confirmed panelist Devin White, geospatial segment lead for NVIDIA Public Sector, with AWS, Google, Overture Maps Foundation, WEKA, and World Wide Technology invited. A second panel turns to the region's innovation hubs and research institutions — among them AMICSTL, BioSTL, Taylor Geospatial, the Lindbergh Foundation, and the City of St. Louis — to discuss how advanced AI can address challenges in agriculture technology, advanced manufacturing, bio and health sciences, and geospatial work.
The speaker roster reaches beyond the lab. Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine, recorded a welcome video for the week and a message for the hackathon coders. Jesse Pujji, founder and CEO of Gateway X and a St. Louis native who studied at Wharton, delivers the opening keynote. Alex Fabry, founder of KFA, is quoted on the event site tying the moment back to the city's aviation history.
Innovation Week is not confined to a single venue. Independent partner and community events run alongside the summit, including a SheCan Connect Global Network gathering on women, purpose-driven technology, and AI, and an 11-week Founder Framework workshop series at T-REX facilitated by venture capitalist Vik Lakhwara for founders with a minimum viable product. The week closes with a Saturday community event on October 17.
Organizers say the event brings together educators, industry leaders, and community stakeholders to explore new technologies and workforce opportunities. St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer delivered remarks and presented a proclamation during the kickoff. The summit's stated mission is to make innovation accessible for everyone and to inspire the next generation of innovators in the Heartland — a region the event's backers argue is ready to show the world what it can build.
"Missouri is the Show Me State," the Innovate USA site declares, "and we are ready to show the world that the Midwest is the best place to build the technologies of tomorrow with the support of a caring community that believes in innovation and changing the world."
For anyone curious about the local innovation ecosystem — a student, a teacher, a small business owner who is not trying to become the next high-growth firm — the week is designed as an open door. Live and recorded panels from the Press Hall, plus Virtual Expo Booth videos, are available online at no cost, though in-person networking and hands-on AI training are reserved for ticket holders on site. Attendees who complete the AI training session receive a virtual completion badge. The hackathon, meanwhile, costs nothing to enter.
It is, in Seper's telling, a chance to hand the next generation the tools he once had to imagine his way toward. "Ideas alone never create change," he wrote, "but it was a start to finding someone to connect with over a shared ambition for innovation."