Frisco Bets Big on Enterprise AI, With a New Venture Fund and a Silicon Valley-Backed Hub Already in Play
- Jul 26
- 7 min read
FRISCO, TEXAS: Two developments that arrived within months of each other are now running in parallel, and together they add up to something Frisco has been building toward for years: a credible, self-sustaining enterprise AI ecosystem. One is a 6,200-square-foot innovation hub perched on the 10th floor of a building most residents know for its athletic therapy clinics. The other is a venture fund launched by one of the city's largest homegrown technology firms. Neither made headlines as loud as a stadium groundbreaking, but for the companies and founders flowing through Collin County right now, both carry real weight.
The Star Gets a Startup Floor
Origin, Frisco's civic innovation hub, opened in May 2025 at 3800 Gaylord Parkway, Suite 1050, on the 10th floor of the Baylor Scott and White Sports Therapy and Research building at The Star, the Dallas Cowboys' corporate headquarters campus just west of the Dallas North Tollway. The address puts founders a short walk from the practice fields on Cowboys Way, across Gaylord Parkway from Omni Frisco Hotel, and within eyeshot of the PGA of America's headquarters a few miles north on Legacy Drive.
The hub is a public-private partnership between the Frisco Economic Development Corporation and Plug and Play, a Silicon Valley-based innovation platform with a presence in more than 60 locations across five continents, according to the Frisco EDC. The Frisco location is notable even by Plug and Play's own standards: it marks the company's largest U.S. expansion outside of California, and it is also Plug and Play's first dedicated sportstech office anywhere in the world. The EDC began developing the concept in 2020, selected Plug and Play through a competitive proposal process in 2023, and cut the ribbon in May 2025.
Inside, the space spans roughly 6,200 square feet of private offices, co-working areas, and meeting rooms. Membership is open to entrepreneurs, service providers, and partner institutions. The University of North Texas at Frisco, whose campus sits several miles east on Warren Parkway near Preston Road, has already committed to sponsoring a dedicated sports innovation zone within the facility, adding an academic anchor to a space otherwise populated by founders and investors.
Frisco is home to more than 500 tech companies and many top-tier leading brands. Origin was a strategic investment in Frisco's future and marks a major step forward in Frisco's continued rise as a national innovation leader. With the help of Baylor Scott and White and Plug and Play, we've created a one-of-a-kind space where new ideas, industries, and startups can flourish here in Frisco, all working side by side.
That quote came from Jason Ford, president of the Frisco EDC, at the May 2025 ribbon cutting, according to the EDC's official release. A longer-range goal sits behind the diplomacy: Gloria Salinas, the EDC's senior vice president and chief growth officer, said the city's aim is to become a venture capital hub by 2040, with Origin serving as the launching pad, according to Community Impact.
Focus Areas Built for Frisco's Identity
Origin's programming is organized around four verticals: fintech, sportstech, AI, and cybersecurity, according to the Frisco EDC. The sportstech angle is not coincidental. Frisco is already home to Toyota Stadium at 9200 World Cup Way, Riders Field at 7300 RoughRiders Trail, the PGA of America headquarters on Legacy Drive, and the Cowboys' practice facility at The Star itself. Plugging a startup accelerator into that infrastructure gives founders direct access to professional sports operators as potential clients and pilots, a competitive advantage that a suburban office park in McKinney or Prosper simply cannot replicate. Plug and Play will host hackathons, workshops, and open networking sessions at Origin on an ongoing basis, with some events also held at Comerica Center on the southeast side of The Star campus, according to the EDC's event listings.
MTX Ventures Adds a Hometown Funding Layer
While Origin was still warming up its co-working spaces, a second piece of the picture clicked into place in October 2025. MTX Group, the Frisco-based digital transformation firm founded in 2008 and now employing roughly 1,200 people, announced the launch of MTX Ventures, a wholly owned investment arm focused on early- and mid-stage enterprise AI companies, according to a press release issued through PR Newswire. The subsidiary is also headquartered in Frisco, keeping both the parent firm and the fund rooted in the same Collin County corridor.
MTX Group built its reputation advising government agencies and large enterprises on digital modernization, giving it a client network that most venture funds can only dream about. MTX Ventures is structured to exploit that network directly. Portfolio companies gain co-selling opportunities alongside MTX's existing client projects, introductions to public-sector decision-makers, and access to a global bench of engineers, data scientists, and cloud architects, according to reporting by Dallas Innovates and EverythingStartups. The fund is not a traditional blind-pool vehicle. It targets founders whose products align with MTX's technology roadmap, then deploys both capital and enterprise access simultaneously.
The investment thesis targets three areas: pure-play AI products that improve enterprise efficiency and decision-making, technology enhanced by agentic AI, and cybersecurity tools designed to build trust and compliance in large-scale government and commercial AI adoption, according to consulting.us. Less than two weeks after announcing MTX Ventures, the firm also acquired VerifyID.ai, an AI-powered digital identity verification platform, according to Dallas Innovates. The deal signaled that MTX is not waiting for portfolio companies to find it.
MTX Ventures fuels the next generation of enterprise AI-native technology companies driving digital transformation and social impact.
That is how Das Nobel, founder and CEO of MTX Group, described the new venture arm in the company's official announcement. Nobel has positioned the fund around what he calls purpose-driven AI, explicitly tying investments to measurable outcomes in health, economics, and broader social benefit, according to Dallas Innovates.
How the Two Pieces Connect
Origin and MTX Ventures are not formally partnered, but they are pulling in the same direction across a city that already counts more than 500 tech companies within its limits, according to the Frisco EDC. Together they create something of a local capital stack for AI founders: a physical space at The Star where early ideas can form, get connected to corporate and investor networks through Plug and Play's global platform, and then potentially find a strategic investor in a homegrown fund with deep public-sector relationships. For a startup trying to sell AI products to city governments or school districts across North Texas, that combination is meaningfully different from leasing desk space in Dallas or Plano and cold-calling procurement offices.
Frisco's location along the Dallas North Tollway, which runs the length of the city's western edge before connecting south toward Legacy Drive and the broader Plano and Addison tech corridor, makes the city accessible to talent based anywhere from Little Elm and The Colony in the north to Plano and McKinney to the east. The density of corporate campuses already clustered near the Tollway, from HALL Park's office towers on Headquarters Drive to Keurig Dr Pepper and Toyota Financial Services, means potential enterprise customers are already neighbors.
A Quiet Shift With Loud Implications
Neither Origin nor MTX Ventures arrived with the fanfare of a stadium announcement or a resort opening. Both are infrastructure plays, the kind that take years to produce visible output. But the Frisco EDC's own economist has calculated a return of $3.44 to the community for every $1 the EDC invests, according to the organization's 2025 annual summary. Building the conditions for the next generation of companies, rather than simply recruiting the current one, is how that return compounds over time. The EDC also framed a specific long-horizon target: growing a billion-dollar company out of Frisco's own startup base before 2040, a goal Salinas articulated publicly at Origin's opening.
Why It Matters
Frisco has spent the better part of two decades being described as the fastest-growing city in America. That label has always been about population and construction. What Origin and MTX Ventures represent is a more deliberate kind of growth: the city is now trying to build the economic layer that sits above the rooftops and the retail pads, one that generates intellectual property and high-wage jobs rather than simply capturing corporate relocations from California or the Northeast. For residents who commute along Gaylord Parkway, drive the Dallas North Tollway to Legacy Drive every morning, or send their children to Frisco ISD schools preparing them for careers that do not yet exist, that shift is personal. The Frisco News will continue tracking which founders come through Origin's doors, which companies MTX Ventures backs, and whether Collin County's enterprise AI ambitions hold up under the pressure of execution.
By Albert Angarita · The Frisco News
Albert is a licensed Texas REALTOR® serving Frisco and North Texas. Buying, selling, or relocating? Work with Albert at Texava Real Estate.
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