SC Tech sits at the center supporting South Carolina’s successful push as a tech-driven, future-focused state. An initiative of the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness (SC Competes), the cluster helps to accelerate growth and innovation while giving the statewide technology community a unified voice. The work is deliberately broad: strengthen a 21st-century workforce; support entrepreneurs and fast-growing companies; connect SC-based tech firm solutions with a broader, more-diverse customer base; and position South Carolina as a recognized hub for innovation and critical technologies such as cybersecurity and AI. In practice, SC Tech functions as a connector and amplifier, translating the needs of a rapidly-changing industry into coordinated action across business, education, and government.
The urgency of SC Tech’s mission is easy to see in the numbers: South Carolina’s targeted and tactically-defined tech industry now generates an estimated $51.7 billion in total economic output, a figure that reflects both direct activity inside tech firms and the ripple effects of tech investment across diverse sectors and the wider economy. Tech labor income in the state totals about $13.8 billion, underscoring that this sector is not just large, but deeply tied to community prosperity. Over the last decade, the sector has grown more than twice as fast as South Carolina’s overall economy, fueled by the way every industry—from advanced manufacturing to life sciences to advanced energy to logistics—has increased reliance on digital products and services.
Rapid tech growth doesn’t only come from recruiting outside firms; it also comes from enabling homegrown startups to form, find capital, and mature here. SC Tech supports these efforts through convenings, mentorship networks, and programming that puts founders in the same rooms as investors and enterprise leaders and helps to support assets such as SC Research Authority. SC Tech’s resources and initiatives like CAP Carolina demonstrate that innovation isn’t bound by geography; it emerges wherever capable people, supportive networks, and commercialization pathways intersect. That mindset aligns with SC Competes’ broader approach of strengthening industry clusters so they become self-reinforcing engines of growth.
Community building is where the cluster’s personality shows. SC Tech hosts and supports events that help the state’s tech and cyber professionals see themselves as part of a shared story, not a scattered set of companies. Together, the story SC Tech tells is one of acceleration with intention. The sector is expanding rapidly and reshaping the state’s economy, enjoying higher wages and in-demand employment.
“We give South Carolina’s tech community a unified voice and the resources to scale innovation into global impact.”
– Jamie DeMent, Director of Technology & Cybersecurity Initiatives, SC Competes –
