FinTech

West Palm Beach

Dual-Use
& Defense Tech

Miami

Meet the 2026 cohort

Meet the 2026 cohort

This is not a traditional accelerator.

It is part of a statewide platform designed to connect companies directly into Florida’s economy.

Gold Coast Tech launched in 2025 as the first accelerator initiative powered by The Florida Council of 100 and its Foundation, eMerge Americas, and Related Ross. Now operating under Ambition Accelerated Florida, this track brings together two tailored, 8-week programs: FinTech in West Palm Beach and Dual-Use & Defense Tech in Miami. The program connects high-growth startups with mentorship from top CEOs and business leaders, corporate partnerships, and access to Florida’s expanding investor network.

partners

Powered by

Presented by

industry partners

The accelerator program is backed by a statewide network of over 75 CEOs, founders, and senior executives, and will connect chosen high-growth startups directly to customers, capital, and leadership across the state, aligning Florida’s regional strengths into a coordinated system designed for scale.

What Companies Gain

Founders are not just entering a program. They are entering a market.

Elite Mentorship

Direct access to top CEOs, investors, and industry leaders

Corporate Partnerships

Pilot and scale with leading enterprises

Market Access

Leverage Florida's thriving ecosystem for growth and customer acquisition

Investor Network

Connect with Florida's vast investor community

Office Space

Meeting and collaboration space provided at no cost to participants

Embarc Collective Scholarship

One founder and one co-founder from each company selected for the 2026 accelerator program will receive a one-year scholarship for membership in Embarc Collective for 2027, providing unfettered access to their nationally recognized startup platform.

Meet the 2026 chort

Two Tracks. One Goal: Scale in Florida

West Palm Beach

FinTech

Focused on groundbreaking innovations in financial services technologies.

Miami

Dual-Use & Defense Tech

Forging national security through dual-use innovation.

2026 FinTech Companies

AAQuant.ai

Atlanta, GA

Founder(s):

Abhinay (Ahbi) Gadikoppula

AAQuant.ai is an AI-native quant fund operating system where agent swarms generate, debate, and stress-test trading strategies around the clock, and statistical gates kill 95% of them before a dollar ever moves.

Alternative Horizons Group, LLC (dba AHG Pay)

West Palm Beach, FL

Founder(s):

Drew Brasiel

AHG Pay is the payments and growth partner for businesses that traditional processors treat as too complicated to serve. We built the company in West Palm Beach after years inside the high-risk processing industry, where we watched good businesses get shut down without warning, lose access to their own money, and never reach a human when it mattered. We do the opposite. Today we serve 180+ active clients across regulated and high-growth verticals, keep chargebacks under 1% portfolio-wide, and hold 95%+ client retention with no contracts. We are profitable and bootstrapped. Our next chapter is the AHG Pay Platform, our own invoicing, text-to-pay, and dual-pricing software that syncs with QuickBooks, which extends everything we do well into mainstream small-business markets far beyond our original niche.

DubPay

Miami, FL (Brazil)

Founder(s):

Mauricio Seixas

DubPay is a Brazilian payment technology company that provides payment processing infrastructure for businesses and digital platforms. Our solutions include Pix, cards, boleto, checkout, split payments, marketplace capabilities, fraud prevention, KYC/AML controls, and cross-border payments. We serve thousands of merchants and are expanding our operations internationally, with a focus on secure, scalable, and compliant financial solutions.

ID4US

France

Founder(s):

Stephane Gervais

ID4US is a European deeptech company building the Human Trust Layer: a 4D ultrasound biometric platform that verifies not only identity, but that the legitimate person is physically present and alive. Our technology combines surface fingerprint recognition, sub-surface tissue imaging and physiological liveness in one touch, making spoofing and credential misuse materially much harder. ID4US has a portfolio of 19 patents, a 40-person multidisciplinary team, and a fully functional USB-C demonstrator ready for customer pilots and integration. We are initially targeting high-assurance financial and enterprise workflows, including critical payments, privileged access and regulated approvals, with expansion into access control, trusted devices and mobility. Our next step is to convert technology readiness into U.S. pilots, OEM partnerships and scalable commercial deployment.

MicroFinance Pro via Aluksons Business Solutions

West Palm Beach, FL (Togo)

Founder(s):

Lionel Aluka

The fintech startup MicroFinance Pro (MFP) aims to bridge traditional and modern finance by connecting international capital providers with vetted local lending institutions, entrepreneurs, and underserved communities. Our platform integrates international & free local transfers, compliance support, institutional operating tools, tontine and ROSCA (traditional) workflows, mobile money, and inter-operator functionality into one ecosystem. This means internet access, the lack of bank account, or bad credit no longer prevent the unbanked from saving, lending or transacting safely. Willing traditional lenders gain security, compliance. Investors gain pre/post-investment transparency. Our journey has been impactful. Recognized with a 2023 national award for Best Digital Transformation Initiative, MFP is preparing to expand through WAEMU's 50M unbanked and into the United States, beginning with US investors onto underserved communities and financial institutions in South Florida. MFP now serves 3,500 paying users, has secured five enterprise contracts representing 40,000 users, and holds 18 lender letters of intent. 

Movik

Miami, FL

Founder(s):

Tomas Shuk

Movik is an AI-powered operating system specifically engineered to modernize the management and financing of small and medium-sized enterprises in the inland transportation and freight industry. The platform serves as an all-in-one intelligent hub that integrates core business functions such as fleet management, working capital financing and banking, insurance and healthcare management, revenue & spend management, and automated back-office operations. By utilizing an AI Copilot that automatically tracks essential documentation like Bills of Lading (BOLs), monitors cash flow cycles, and flags potential issues in real-time, Movik provides clients with the visibility and on-demand capital needed to streamline their logistics and improve financial health.

PayFlex

Miami, FL (Uruguay)

Founder(s):

Fausto Friedrich

PayFlex is building the financial wellbeing platform for America’s frontline workforce, starting with the underserved Hispanic workforce. Our core product gives employees access to wages they have already earned, with no interest or fees, through an employer subscription model. We are expanding this into an AI-powered financial and wellbeing agent available directly through WhatsApp and iMessage, providing personalized financial education, coaching, mental health and stress support, nutrition and fitness guidance, insurance, and other benefits. For employers, PayFlex is a powerful tool to attract, retain, and engage frontline talent; for employees, it delivers financial flexibility and meaningful support through channels they already use. Founded in Uruguay, PayFlex serves 15,000+ workers across 35+ companies and is expanding in the U.S., with operations and customers in Texas and Florida. Our vision is to become the everyday financial and wellbeing companion for America’s frontline workforce.

Payslice (Ubuntu Solutions, Inc.)

Miami, FL

Founder(s):

Brian Gerrard

Payslice is embedded fintech infrastructure that lets payroll and fintech companies underwrite and offer their users instant, earned wage access in any currency, including stablecoins. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, and incorporated as Ubuntu Solutions, Inc., Payslice was founded by Brian Gerrard and Gabriel Rojas. The company has generated $130,000 in total revenue, including $40,000 in the last three months, and is currently raising a $1,300,000 round to accelerate partner integrations and growth across its embedded earned wage access platform.

RangersAI

Boca Raton, FL

Founder(s):

Ayelet Biger-Levin

RangersAI provides an AI powered scam resilience platform that helps financial institutions protect customers before money is lost. Our flagship solution, ScamRanger, intervenes before customers are manipulated, helping them recognize scam communications, make safer decisions, and take the right next steps.Unlike traditional fraud solutions focused on suspicious transactions, RangersAI addresses the human side of fraud, where sophisticated social engineering convinces legitimate customers to authorize payments themselves.Our platform combines real time scam detection and personalized guidance with behavioral education and practical tools that build long term scam resilience. Financial institutions can deploy ScamRanger as a branded solution across multiple digital channels.RangersAI is commercially deployed with a major UK financial institution and is now scaling in the US, partnering with banks and credit unions to reduce scam losses while strengthening customer trust and confidence.

Stingray Technology Solutions, LLC

Delray Beach, FL

Founder(s):

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, FL

Founder(s):

Edgar Harutyunyan

Wamy is an AI claim analyst for P&C claims. Most claims software treats a claim as a static pile of documents. Wamy treats it as a live state: every new document, payment, deadline, or legal action triggers a fresh analysis of coverage, damages, exposure, and next steps. Underneath is a statutory engine we built by structuring insurance statutes across all 50 states. It maps each claim's facts and dates to the specific laws and deadlines that apply, so the legal analysis never relies on an LLM's memory or general knowledge. Others use AI to automate tasks around a claim. Wamy continuously computes the claim itself. For current customers, this saves 15-20 hours per claim while reducing missed deadlines, overlooked damages, and unrecognized legal exposure.

Wrangle

New York City, NY

Founder(s):

Richard Garcia

Wrangle is an AI assistant for mortgage loan officers. It handles the work between a loan officer taking on a new borrower and that borrower's file being ready for underwriting.A loan officer collects a pile of documents from a borrower (pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements), arriving as phone photos, emailed screenshots, and WhatsApp forwards. The LO has to identify each one, file it, figure out what's missing or wrong, chase the borrower for the rest, and compute qualifying income by hand. Most shops hire an assistant or processor for this. Small shops can't afford to.Wrangle reads every document as it arrives, files it, tracks it against the file's needs list, follows up with the borrower in English or Spanish on the LO's approval, and computes qualifying income with the math shown. Three Miami brokerages are running live files through Wrangle and one is now a paying customer.

2026 Dual-Use & Defense Companies

ARSOFT US

Miami, Florida

Founder(s):

Aidan DeLellis

ARSOFT US is the wholly U.S.-owned operating arm of a Spanish XR company with 13+ years of commercial experience delivering solutions for partners such as the Spanish Army, Spanish National Police, Navantia (Naval), and Renfe (railway systems). We transform complex industrial and clinical workflows into immersive, actionable experiences (fully compatible with VR headsets, AR glasses, PC, and mobile devices).Our core suite includes EyeFlow (no-code interactive 3D training authoring), EyeInspection (AR + mobile guided field work instructions, maintenance, inspection, and remote assistance with AI and computer-vision integrations), and LAIA XR (AI-powered conversion of DICOM imaging into interactive 3D models for surgical planning).We provide custom development of dynamic digital twins that fuse live sensor data, historical records, 3D geometry, and LiDAR to support industrial and manufacturing automation.ARSOFT US helps organizations reduce downtime, improve safety, accelerate training, and enable remote expertise through practical, scalable extended reality solutions.

Ave Maria Biotech

Ave Maria, Florida

Founder(s):

Ronald Freeze

Ave Maria Biotech, Inc. (AMB) is a Delaware C-Corporation headquartered in Ave Maria, Florida, operating in CBRN defense, bio-surveillance, and public health. Its core platform, the BD-500, is based on a patented UV laser-induced fluorescence optics systems that detects airborne pathogens in real time. The technology has reached technology readiness level 6 following successful testing under a CRADA with the Army DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center and real world testing in college classrooms. AMB is led by Ron Freeze, Ph.D., (President & CEO), Dr. Robert Redfield (Chief Scientific Officer, former CDC Director), and Michael Caputo (EVP of marketing and founder). The BD-500 is designed to be a Dual Use product.  Most recently, AMB was awarded a CBD SBIR Phase I addressing far-forward manufacturing of the BD-500 and is in contract negotiations, and is pursuing parallel non-dilutive funding across DoD and NIH to accelerate research a de-risk our path to commercialization.

Certus Core

Tampa, Florida

Founder(s):

Jake Dyal

Certus Core is an AI company founded by Veterans dedicated to the nation's hardest problems. Our flagship AI appliance, IBIS™, fuses data from any sensor platform and puts a natural language interface on top — so any operator at the edge can query it directly, without needing to interpret the raw output, and without a network connection or a data engineer. 

Deeper Breath Inc.

Ventura, California

Founder(s):

Dustin Wish

Deeper Breath Inc. develops intelligent safety and human-performance technology built around the Canary platform. The company combines connected protective equipment, environmental and physiological sensors, secure communications, cloud software, and AI-driven analytics to help organizations understand hazards, worker conditions, and respiratory performance in real time.

Earendel

Aventura, FL

Founder(s):

Ryan Conlan

Earendel is an energy autonomy platform providing operational energy decision intelligence and unmanned power solutions to defense customers in distributed autonomous operations. The proliferation of unmanned systems and AI edge compute has made energy the most volatile constraint in the battlespace. Earendel deploys an intelligent network of unmanned energy generation and storage nodes to extend mission endurance, ensure energy availability, and maximize operational readiness. The AI-native software platform serves as the sustainment engine for tactical energy intelligence and autonomous energy orchestration. Earendel's dual-use applications extend to critical infrastructure protection, disaster response, and austere environments where energy availability determines operational success.

KeeperSpace Inc

Cape Canaveral, FL

Founder(s):

Amanda Fadely

KeeperSpace is the traffic, coordination, and tracking infrastructure layer built in-space, for space — enabling resilience and autonomy for spacecraft in an increasingly congested, contested, and complex operational environment. Cape Canaveral-based, we're proud to be growing on Florida's Space Coast.

Reef Arches

West Palm Beach, FL

Founder(s):

Nick Bourdon

Reef Arches is a dual-use coastal technology product company focused on both coastal restoration & defense. Our wave attenuation device is a concrete, honey-comb arch with a novel flow-through design water & sediment to move freely through the units thus, restoring shorelines & marine habitat simultaneously. Our patented design allows for our additional accessories to be "plugged" into the honey-comb cells for artificial reef, coral outplanting, & oyster projects. Because we've been successfully executing on government projects throughout Florida already & earned FDEP Resilience Grants, we grew to create size options including 3.5-TONS, .5-TONS, and 100-POUND units. The products “stack like Pringles & connect like Legos” allowing for a hyper-scalable solution on barges & flatbed trucks. Our products are intended to be deployed in variety of environments (i.e. ocean, riverain, marsh and intracoastal environments). We are a 3-year-old company & have deployed across Florida and beyond. Featured on Forbes 

Soarce, Inc.

Orlando, Florida

Founder(s):

Patrick Michel

Soarce is a modern biorefinery company building a domestic supply chain for critical materials by converting abundant, low-cost U.S. biomass (i.e., miscanthus) into high-performance and commodity products. Our low-CAPEX, modular platform produces functionalized nanocellulose additives that enhance the performance of composites, coatings, and other advanced materials, as well as mil-spec cellulose precursors for energetic systems. These materials support dual-use applications across aerospace, defense, automotive, infrastructure, and energy, helping manufacturers reduce costs, improve performance, and decrease reliance on vulnerable foreign supply chains. Unlike traditional capital-intensive biorefineries, Soarce’s modular approach is designed to scale alongside feedstock availability and customer demand. Longer term, we plan to valorize additional biomass fractions into products such as lignin and C5/C6 sugars, maximizing feedstock utilization and creating additional revenue streams while strengthening U.S. industrial and defense manufacturing capacity.

Supply Veins, Inc.

Miami, FL

Founder(s):

Charles Masters Rodriguez

Supply Veins is an AI-Native operating system that turns supplier emails into reliable execution for procurement. Today, purchasing teams manage hundreds of suppliers across fragmented tools like email, spreadsheets and ERP systems, costing billions of dollars in supply chain inefficiencies. We help dual-use manufacturing teams improve supplier communication, automate email follow-ups and track purchase orders in real time; saving our users 4 hours per day and reducing unnecessary order defects by 30%. We also prepare them for the President's recent Executive Order 14415 to secure and scale America's defense supply chains.

TEKMARA

Parrish, Florida

Founder(s):

Todd Kleperis

“Always-on underwater systems securing and monitoring critical ocean infrastructure.”We work with Aquarius reef base, FIU and NASA now.  Aquarius is the world's only underwater research station that's tied directly to a university and has been working with NASA for close to 40 years. The US Navy, NOAA, and international institutions have been using this for a very long time.

Meet the Inaugural Class

Our inaugural Gold Coast Tech Accelerator concluded—bringing together two tailored, 8-week programs that helped startups grow and expand in Florida.

REGION OVERVIEW

Florida’s Gold Coast, which spans West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami and their respective counties, represents a unified economic corridor with the scale to compete nationally. This corridor of explosive growth connects Florida’s deep economic strengths including finance, healthcare, logistics, and dual-use & defense with the latest advancements in AI, FinTech, smart infrastructure, and digital transformation.

GOLD COAST BY THE NUMBERS

#1

In GDP Growth over the last 3 years among major metropolitan areas

#1

In New Business Formations

#3

In Talent Attraction

#1

The Gold Coast is ranked 1st in the nation for Finance and Insurance GDP growth over the last five years among major metropolitan areas, outpacing New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley.

The Gold Coast is ranked 1st in the nation for Finance and Insurance GDP growth over the last five years among major metropolitan areas, outpacing New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley.

#2

Florida's defense industry ranks second nationwide in manufacturing defense systems and aerospace products, with an economic impact of more than $100 billion annually

Florida's defense industry ranks second nationwide in manufacturing defense systems and aerospace products, with an economic impact of more than $100 billion annually

Ambition Accelerated Florida is a statewide economic-development and company-building platform powered by The Florida Council of 100 and its Foundation.

info@ambitionaccelerated.com

INITIATIVES & RESOURCES

GET INVOLVED

© 2026 The Florida Council of 100 Foundation. All rights reserved.

Ambition Accelerated Florida is a statewide economic-development and company-building platform powered by The Florida Council of 100 and its Foundation.

info@ambitionaccelerated.com

INITIATIVES & RESOURCES

GET INVOLVED

© 2026 The Florida Council of 100 Foundation. All rights reserved.

Ambition Accelerated Florida is a statewide economic-development and company-building platform powered by The Florida Council of 100 and its Foundation.

info@ambitionaccelerated.com

INITIATIVES & RESOURCES

GET INVOLVED

© 2026 The Florida Council of 100 Foundation. All rights reserved.