Ratmir Timashev is a software entrepreneur and co-founder of the performance venture OH.io, which aims to bring 100 AI companies to Columbus, Ohio.
For more than a decade, the political conversation around the American heartland has focused on opioids and globalism hollowing out once-vibrant towns.
Now a new narrative is emerging: The heartland is destined to become the battery pack of the artificial intelligence economy — a desolate expanse of data centers and servers powering prosperity elsewhere.
This narrative, however, misses a deeper story.
It’s easy to see why it’s gaining traction. The Great Lakes region alone was home to about 525 data centers as of late 2024, with 224 more planned through the end of the decade. These sprawling complexes raise tough political questions about land use, energy demand and how many local jobs they truly create. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called for a moratorium on their construction, labeling their spread an “unregulated sprint.”
But in fact, the heartland is poised to thrive in the new AI economy. This is due not only to its open acreage but also to its free enterprise spirit and human capital — a values-driven, increasingly tech-educated populace that is eager to stay where the cost of living is affordable.
Data centers will help by bringing AI infrastructure, but true success requires additional investment that is already well underway. I am one of many — including technologists, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and real estate developers — who are putting billions into such heartland cities as Columbus, Denver and Wichita because these places offer something the coasts do not, something uniquely American.
I bring my own perspective to what makes the region special. I first came to the United States from Russia as a graduate student shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Ohio State University sponsored my student visa. Columbus reminded me of my Russian hometown of Ufa — industrial and hardworking — but with a key difference: Here, talent was cultivated, not wasted.
In the Soviet system, your job and apartment were assigned to you. Everyone earned the same salary of about 100 rubles per month. Our main exposure to entrepreneurship was a black market for Marlboro cigarettes, Coca-Cola and blue jeans.
But in Ohio, I experienced a capitalist system that made intuitive sense. Incentives were aligned with the greater good and human creativity was celebrated.
I intended to stay for three years but remained far longer. Over time, I became an American citizen, and my business partner and I hired homegrown Columbus talent to launch software businesses now valued in the billions.
Stories like mine are now repeating themselves in countless variations across the region — for both American and foreign entrepreneurs.
Where once the best and brightest felt compelled to relocate to the coasts, today, heartland metros rank among the nation’s leaders in the concentration of talent. That’s thanks in part to universities like Ohio State and programs such as its Center for Software Innovation, where we are building a new experiential learning program that connects students with tech industry opportunities while they are still enrolled.
Good policymaking also helps. Ohio, for its part, has put in place a new venture capital gains tax deduction for tax year 2026 that aims to push annual venture capital investments over $2 billion.
AI and other technologies are also making it easier for talent to stay put. You no longer need proximity to Silicon Valley to access compute, coding talent or financing.
As the brain drain slows, the “brain gain” is accelerating. From July 2024 to June 2025, the Midwest recorded positive net domestic migration for the first time this decade, and it was the only region in the country where all states gained population.
My own experience backs this up. In partnership with software entrepreneur Jeff Schumann, I recently launched a performance venture that aims to attract 100 AI companies from around the world to Columbus, and we are finding more takers than we ever expected. Many founders want access to the U.S. market but can’t afford to set up shop in New York or Silicon Valley — or are turned off by their anti-capitalist leanings.
Meanwhile, the heartland offers an attractive place to go to market in America because it looks like America. Draw a 100-mile circle around Columbus, and you capture a cross section of the national economy — manufacturers and service firms, global companies and family businesses, urban customers as well as rural. Appealing to these customers matters more than exciting early adopters in a handful of elite markets.
Perhaps I am biased by the debt of gratitude I owe to Ohio State and Columbus, but I believe the lesson I learned here is instructive for our time: that America’s wealth lies not just in its talent, its global cities or its rolling acres fit for construction. Russia has those, too. America’s wealth lies in granting people from anywhere the ability to make it everywhere.
That’s why I am confident that the heartland is not merely a place to host servers. It is a place where human creativity can be turned into thriving companies, universities and cities.
If we leverage this country’s free enterprise system and get the investments right, America will extend the prosperity of the AI economy to all, and its heartland will be a model for the world.
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