About the Slater Fund Inc.

The Slater Technology Fund was created in 1997 by Governor Lincoln Almond and the Rhode Island General Assembly to stimulate the creation of new technology-based companies in Rhode Island. The Fund is financed annually by the General Assembly.

Slater Fund Inc. Highlights

Since its inception, Slater Technology Fund has:

• Provided financing to more than 90 technology ventures in Rhode Island.
• Invested in excess of $20 million of public sector funding into companies that have raised in excess of $200 million in external financing.
• Successfully recruited numerous out-of-state companies.
• Backed ventures that have created high-value jobs in the state, and offer the potential for even greater job creation in the future.

Slater focuses its resources on industry sectors deemed to be particularly well suited to developing an innovation-based economy in Rhode Island: These industry sectors fall under two broad categories::

• Life Sciences
• Information Technology

Slater provides up to $3 million annually in seed funding for local technology-based ventures in these two categories. This seed funding – combined with the deep industry knowledge and network of strategic partnerships that Slater provides – often serves as the critical catalyst that enables a company to successfully make the transition from the lab to the investment stage and/or product sales.

Slater also provides incubator space at Richmond Square in Providence, and maintains a Fellows Program designed to introduce Rhode Island university students to entrepreneurship in the biotech and life sciences industries in Rhode Island.

More about the National Science Foundation’s R.I. EPSCoR Slater Fellows Program.