If $10 million votes of confidence are the future currency of South Florida’s economic development, then some parts of Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties might well become the Silicon Valley replica that some planners and developers envision.
Early last week, regional billionaires Steven Ross of the Related Ross development firm and Ken Griffin of the Citadel investment firm committed that amount to help accelerate the migration of relocation-minded businesses to the region. The men are teaming with the Florida Council of 100, a longtime organization of CEOs, investors and business founders, for an initiative called “Ambition Accelerated” to communicate with peers interested in migrating to Florida’s “Gold Coast.”
“Our members are the leaders building and scaling companies across Florida today, which gives us credibility to help others understand the opportunity that exists here,” Michael Simas, the council president and CEO, said in a prepared statement. “Rather than a traditional program or application process, this effort is about direct engagement and informed conversations. We help decision-makers see how Florida’s Gold Coast fits into their growth strategy, connect them with the right people, and understand what it would take to build here.”
A more tempered economy
For now, local analysts, developers, innovators and promoters — as well as anyone sizing up the “Gold Coast” as a potential relocation site — can all expect to encounter a slower speed regional economy this year after a multi-year surge of migration and growth driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan Cutsinger is an economist who less than two years ago arrived from Texas to teach at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He sees slower, but “solid growth in this area because we’ve created the type of environment that people want to live in and do business in.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” he said. “Even if it’s not extremely rapid growth, it’s the sustained 3% growth that compounds over time and makes a large difference in living standards.”
From a website he recently developed on the South Florida economy, here are four “Fast Facts” that illustrate where the region stands:
Fast Fact 1
There is over $400 billion in combined real GDP across Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties — making South Florida one of the largest regional economies in the U.S.
‘Not only do you have people coming [to South Florida] but you have a very friendly institutional environment to do business,” Cutsinger told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’s not just the people — it’s that you’ve got innovation that’s coming here and making them even more productive than before.”
Fast Fact 2
“There are more than 2.5 million jobs across the tri-county area with employment concentrated in healthcare, retail, professional service, and hospitality.”
Fast Fact 3
“Nearly 300,000 businesses operate in the region, spanning industries from tourism and trade to finance and technology.”
But there was a slowdown in this category as well.
“Between 2023 and 2024 there is actually a fair amount of growth,” Cutsinger said. “In 2025 for many industries it went down a little bit. That could be a leveling out of the big influx of people coming here opening businesses.”
Fast Fact 4
“Palm Beach County reports the highest average wages across major industries, followed by Miami-Dade and then Broward.”
From COVID ‘whipsaw’ to deceleration
Sean Snaith, an economist who oversees forecasting and research at the University of Central Florida, agreed the state economy in general is easing after multiple years of pandemic-driven migration.
“In the COVID 19 era, we were kind of whipsawed around in terms of economic growth and migration patterns in terms of the labor market,” he said. “It was just a roller-coaster ride for several years. I think now that’s largely in the rearview mirror. The job numbers are not growing as robustly as they once were. We’re forecasting GDP [Gross Domestic Product] growth to decelerate as well.
“Of all of those metrics we expect the state to outperform the [U.S.] economy,” Snaith added. “Uncertainty is a part of it, too. It was a year of tariffs and trade wars last year. Now it’s in front of the Supreme Court. You’ve got a change in leadership coming up at the Fed. I don’t think there is a mad rush for businesses to go out and hire. At the same time the unemployment rate remains at historical low levels.”
Tourism holding its own
Visit Lauderdale, the tourism marketing agency for Broward County, said it expects visitation “to grow modestly, 1-3% in 2026.” It was up 2.5% in 2025 versus 2024.
On a live New Year’s Eve CNN program, the agency kicked off a new promotional campaign called “Never Lose Your Splash” to keep the area top-of-mind among travelers.
Although Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport passenger traffic fell by roughly 3 million passengers or 8.5% in 2025 versus the prior year, the decline “did not seem to have a great impact on visitation to our destination,” the agency said in a statement.
“There was an increase of around 1% in Florida visitation [excluding the tri-county area] versus out of state visitation,” the agency added. “So, there was a slight shift in traveler composition to more driving.”
Tourist development tax revenue came in at $124 million in 2025, a 0.3% increase over 2024. Hotel demand was up 1.3% percent, and Port Everglades welcomed over 4 million cruise line passengers, a 16.2% annual increase.
“These results reflect more than demand, they reflect confidence in our destination,” Stacy Ritter, president and chief executive officer of Visit Lauderdale, said during the agency’s annual lunch last month. “Our focus is not just on being seen, but on being remembered, and that intention is driving real economic impact for our community.”
Peter Ricci, director of the hospitality and tourism management program at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business, cited the openings of the 801-room Omni Hotel next to the county convention center in Fort Lauderdale, the revamped Pier Sixty-Six Resort nearby and a variety of high-profile events as reasons for promising visitor traffic this year.
“South Florida should expect to have a relatively strong 2026 with major events in the area [PGA Tournament, Formula 1, et al] and the Southern White House of Mar-a-Lago enhancing higher average daily rates in The Palm Beaches,” he said by email.
“Broward is perfectly positioned to capture demand both to its south and north and I expect that hotels and restaurants will have a good year ahead,” he added.
Recruiters highly active
Leaders of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County and the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance in Broward County said they support the Florida Council of 100 initiative.
But Kelly Smallridge, CEO and president of the Palm Beach County agency, said her efforts, which date back to 2011 developing the county’s “Wall Street South” identity, are more about sustaining the county’s brand as a financial center as opposed to waging a single campaign.
“It’s a continuum,” she said. “Wall Street South was never a slogan, it was a strategy.”
“Twenty years ago people did not take our county seriously,” Smallridge added. “Palm Beach or the Palm Beaches is one of the most recognizable names in the world.”
Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Broward alliance, said “any investment in building the South Florida brand is a fantastic opportunity.”
“I would love to do a recruiting trip with both of them,” Swindell said of Ross and Griffin. “They’re definitely a bigger draw.”
Broward has had a different emphasis in its industry recruitment targets, even though the region’s three development agencies have increasingly collaborated with promoting South Florida.
Swindell said the aviation industry “has been one of my favorites for the last couple of years.” Over the last decade, the field has generated 22,000 jobs. Life sciences, marine and pharma are other leading targets.
“We like to make the case that Broward is central to all three counties,” he said.
Demand for offices, housing
Christina Jolley, senior vice president and Broward market leader at Blanca Commercial Real Estate, said the Ross-Griffin donation “reinforces this idea that there’s still a lot of value in Florida in terms of relocating your business.”
She said that South Florida is “still growing a lot faster than the rest of the country” in terms of office occupancy.
“We’re still seeing companies that want to invest in their office space in terms of providing a pleasant environment for their employees to come in each day,” she said.
Dan Kaplan, a managing partner of PMG, and Miki Naftali, chairman and CEO of the Naftali Group, said they are “bullish” on Fort Lauderdale as PMG wraps up construction and starts leasing the second phase of its Society Las Olas 42-story apartment building. Naftali is the developer of the luxury Viceroy Residences Fort Lauderdale.
“You’re seeing significant wealth moving from California to Miami,” Kaplan said. “We’re incredibly bullish on the South Florida area in general.” The firm is now at the 60th-story stage of its 1,049-foot high supertall project in Miami.
But there is a slowdown in construction, he said. “We’re hopefully seeing a slowdown in costs.”
Naftali said South Florida overall should be viewed as a market that is “stable.”
“South Florida and the stretch between Miami and the Palm Beaches is very appealing to many people from around the country and frankly also around the world,” he said. “When you speak with people in Europe, in the Middle East, in the Far East, they are very much aware of the growth we see, and I think 2026 will be a good year.”
Technology: Inbound and homegrown
While tourism, hospitality, real estate and health care are mainstays of the tri-county’s economy, the holy grail in South Florida is growth in technology, either through relocations or homegrown development.
Late last month, Palm Beach County got a sizable lift when D-Wave, characterized by the Business Development Board as “the world’s top quantum computing company,” announced it was relocating its corporate headquarters from California to Boca Raton.
At the same time, Florida Atlantic University purchased a $20 million quantum computer from D-Wave, “making it the state’s first and only university to host an onsite quantum computer. This partnership signals deep collaboration through workforce development and eventually an official academy,” the board said.
Palm Beach State College, the board and Quantum Coast Capital hosted a “quantum meeting” consisting of leaders from Ion-Q, D-Wave, NVIDIA, IBM, Levatas and FAU. The purpose: discuss “the next steps in building a collaborative quantum ecosystem in South Florida.”
For those looking to close talent and productivity gaps at South Florida businesses, they might turn their attention to a Broward startup called SynthBee, the latest project of longtime technology entrepreneur Rony Abovitz, a founder of MAKO Surgical and Magic Leap.
SynthBee, which just announced the completion of $100 million in funding, has a proprietary “collaborative intelligence” platform that helps businesses solve “complex scientific, engineering, design, compliance and creative challenges at extreme speed, with high accuracy, high privacy, high reliability, under human control and with clear auditability.”
In other words, the platform takes a fraction of the time it would take for humans to solve problems — as in minutes versus weeks or months.
The goal, according to Abovitz: “Using non-human intelligence in a safe way to help people build industry, build medical devices, build safe airplanes, build good cars, build up the economy — we think what we’re building is much more effective.”
Right now, the firm is working with multiple companies in the aerospace, automotive, fintech and health care fields.