Deep talent and cutting-edge assets poise Fairfax County at the forefront of technology advancement.
In Northern Virginia’s (NOVA) Fairfax County, collaboration on a “super regional scale” is the strategy for the future, according to Fairfax County Economic Development Authority President and CEO Victor Hoskins. This means working together with other areas within Virginia and Maryland and stakeholders and policymakers in the U.S. National Capital Region (NCR) to maintain and grow Fairfax County’s more than $130 billion economy. Fairfax NOVA’s status as the economic engine of Virginia and Greater Washington starts with its workforce. Employers in cutting-edge tech and science industry sectors pull from the world-class universities available in the county and nearby: Johns Hopkins University; Virginia Tech; George Washington University; University of Maryland, College Park; George Mason University; University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, among others. About 60 universities and colleges pepper the region that Fairfax taps into for talent. Each year, this computes to around 500,000 enrollees and 90,000 degrees collected, a “knowledge factory” for educational attainment in the region. In Fairfax County, over 60% of the population has a bachelor’s degree or better. Neighboring Arlington sits at 73%.
Powering Virginia and Greater Washington
Among the additional salient factors making Fairfax stand out in workforce: a high number of tech and cybersecurity professionals. Hoskins points out that the area’s “cybersecurity talent and cybersecurity infrastructure is massive. We have a lot of clear talent because this is a place of transition for a lot of military coming out, and a lot of that group has secret and top secret clearance.”
He notes that the transition from public to private sector is extremely important for agencies who contract in sensitive areas. Virginia has one of the highest concentrations of cybersecurity workers in the United States — almost 90,000. The state was also the first to adopt the NIST Cyber Framework, which has provided guidance since 2014 for organizations to better understand and improve their management of cybersecurity risk.
Starting a few years ago, Fairfax County upped its funding of the entire pipeline of present and future workers, which included K-12 career educational programming, strengthening connections to over 100 nationwide universities and reskilling and upskilling individuals through the Workforce, Innovation, Skills Hub (WISH), including people retiring from the military.
“We don’t stop at our borders. We work with over 17,500 companies throughout our region and in Northern Virginia because people work in one place and live in another place.”
— Victor Hoskins, President and CEO, Fairfax County Economic Development Authority
“We work with veterans in transition,” says Hoskins, noting that the hub helped more than 10,000 veterans and their spouses land jobs in Northern Virginia. “Even though Fairfax is running this digital hub, we actually use it for the whole region. We don’t stop at our borders. We work with over 17,500 companies throughout our region and in Northern Virginia because people work in one place and live in another place.”
Building a Secure Digital Infrastructure
Fairfax NOVA has also taken strides in the quantum industry, co-founding the Quantum World Congress in 2022 with nonprofit organization and operator Connected DMV, the Quantum Economic Development Consortium and the Quantum Industry Coalition. Held in Tysons last year, the event hosts leaders from the science, industry, government, finance and educational fields to convene on the topic of quantum technology. Last year, the Quantum World Congress saw 1,500 attendees from 31 countries over three days.
Corporate real estate development in digital assets has seen a significant boost in Fairfax County lately. Real estate investment and development firm Penzance broke ground on a 45-megawatt, 240,000-sq.-ft. facility in Chantilly, built to meet hyperscale demand and exemplifying an innovative digital infrastructure project that will intensify NOVA Fairfax’s positioning as a leading tech hub. Construction is expected to be done in 2027, and Penzance has leased the facility to Amazon Web Services.
“Next generation digital infrastructure is the foundation of a future-proof economy, and this project strengthens Fairfax County’s position as one of the most competitive tech hubs in the world,” said Hoskins at the time of the groundbreaking. “It creates the capacity needed for AI model development, quantum research, autonomous systems, secure cloud operations and the advanced industries that will define the next generation of innovation.”
Defense and national security leader Xcelerate Solutions, based in Tysons, also expanded its headquarters footprint from 7,700 to 23,000 sq. ft. in late 2025, a move that will grow the company’s work in enterprise vetting, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection.
Other tech expansion wins include Umbra Space Technology, which announced in February 2026 that it would invest $6.75 million to establish a 20,000-sq.-ft. office in Reston. The Santa Barbara, California-based company develops advanced remote sensing technology, spacecraft and satellite systems for the space and defense industries. Reston also saw another corporate expansion from dual-use technology company Blue Sky Innovators, which announced it would spend $7 million to expand its presence in the city. The expansion will mean 175 new jobs and an innovation and lab space, SkyLab, that will span 20,000 sq. ft. above the company’s current office. SkyLab will be a secured collaboration facility designed for rapid prototyping and information integration, which will allow for the quick onboarding of new technologies across different applications that include quantum, cyber, AI, data and emerging defense technologies.
From Seed to Space
Startups have plenty of room to expand in Fairfax NOVA, and the prospect of aerospace exploration is as popular as ever. One firm exemplifying this is Earth-to-Mars Capital (E2MC). Founded in 2020 and headed by Raphael Roettgen, E2MC is a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage space technology startups, including flashier ones like SpaceX. E2MC’s accelerator, Orbital Edge, also works with the ISS National Laboratory, and the venture firm has also founded and worked with dozens of other accelerators, including KickSky in India.
E2MC’s office sits on George Mason University’s campus. The location gives the firm a great starting point when looking for interns — and also offers critical positioning near the NCR for the startup investor.
“Arguably, the most important stakeholder of the global space sector at this point in time still is the U.S. government,” says Roettgen, noting the federal government’s penchant for rewarding contracts and grants to space companies of all sizes. “Not only the early-stage ones we invest in [at E2MC], but also later-stage ones, and then some very mature companies — well-known aerospace companies like Northrop Grumman, which has of course a presence here in the area. We felt that at this point in time of the development of the sector we should be close to the most important stakeholder.”
Several three-letter federal agencies hold up the legacy aerospace & defense sector in NOVA, including the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and also other key governmental entities accelerating space exploration activity: the Pentagon, DARPA, the U.S. Department of War and U.S. Department of Commerce. In Northern Virginia, established aerospace and defense companies like Boeing Company, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin all have a presence, underpinning the area’s future potential as a flourishing space ecosystem.
Asked where he sees space commercialization in a decade, Roettgen mentions NASA news about a potential lunar base with crewed and uncrewed vehicles traveling between Earth and its moon periodically.
“Commercial use cases around that are going to keep growing,” he speculates, adding that the U.S. Department of War will likely be interested in dual-use defense-related applications of any new technology developed for space exploration. Roettgen says as more infrastructure is built off planet, the acceleration of space manufacturing will likely follow, citing microgravity conditions that can allow for different kinds of research and production to be conducted than what is possible on Earth. “This is really going to enable manufacturing things in space for the first time in a commercially viable way,” he adds.
Virginia has a longstanding history of aerospace and defense technology, giving space tech companies in Fairfax County a natural advantage. Rocket testing takes place not far from the capital at Wallops Flight Facility, located on the eastern shore of the state.
Photo by Chris Pirner courtesy of NASA
Human-Motivated AI
In Northern Virginia, business is people-driven. The consulting, media, marketing and hospitality sectors all have a critical human value-added component. That is the impetus for the mission driving AI startup Hupside’s technology, founded less than a year ago in the NOVA region.
“It made a lot of sense to have our home in a place where, frankly, a lot of companies could use our technology,” says CEO and Co-Founder Jonathan Aberman. Hupside’s office sits in McLean, Virginia, an unincorporated community that is part of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro that ranked No. 2 in Site Selection magazine’s North American Tech Hub Index in 2026. Aberman has worked as professor, advisor and startup founder in the tech world for decades, with a base in Northern Virginia since the late ’90s.
“Hupside is the world’s first original intelligence infrastructure,” he says. “We’re able to measure the originality in how a person approaches life, how much originality they create and we can evaluate the originality [of] the piece of content.”
Hupside does this by measuring a human individual’s output against what an AI model does with the same task, explains Aberman. Gamification is part of the process. Users play one of the games on Hupside’s platform, and the technology gets a sense of the player’s originality. It quickly assesses to what extent a player can provide an answer that AI could.
“Originality is not the creativity — it’s the output,” he says, marking an important distinction in what the startup is asserting about originality. “It’s what you do that’s different from the norm. And the reality of what human beings do and AI doesn’t do.”
The young startup is already seeing deployment of its AI creativity tool, Hupchecker, in classrooms. “We have a number of early adopters in the university setting,” Aberman says about the company that received $1.7 million in pre-seed venture funding last year. “Universities are using this to understand their clients, their students and their originality capability, so they can start to think about how to teach them better and keep an eye on students to make sure they’re progressing and that their cognition isn’t being affected by being exposed to AI.”
The largest public research
university in Virginia,
George Mason University,
located in Fairfax County,
graduates more than 11,000
students each year.
A Deep Talent Pool
The largest public research university in Virginia, George Mason University (GMU), located in Fairfax County, graduates more than 11,000 students each year. GMU is a critical talent pipeline for the region’s innovation workforce, says GMU Dean of the College of Science Dr. Cody W. Edwards.
Alumni are often sought after by federal agencies, Fortune 500 companies, startups and leading research institutions, he says. Many graduates remain in Northern Virginia, adding to the local pool of highly educated and skilled workers.
“Our location places us in direct collaboration with organizations such as NASA, NOAA, the Department of Defense, Inova Health System and technology companies across the region,” says Edwards. “These partnerships allow our researchers to advance work in areas such as personalized medicine, climate science, quantum technologies and space systems.”
Edwards notes that universities across Virginia, Maryland and the D.C. area frequently work together to align research strengths, share resources and expand opportunities for students and faculty, forming one of the most dynamic research and talent ecosystems in the country.
“What makes George Mason distinctive is the combination of scale, diversity and real-world impact,” Edwards says. “Our location provides an extraordinary advantage. Being embedded in one of the world’s leading technology corridors allows our students and faculty to collaborate directly with federal agencies, global companies and research partners. … Through our research centers, academic program and partnerships — from Fairfax and SciTech to the Potomac Science Center and the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation — we are helping build the talent pipelines and research capacity that power key sectors such as life sciences, AI and space.”
This Investment Profile has been prepared under the auspices of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. For more information, visit www.fairfaxcountyeda.org.
