A Series B helicopter ride through new (and new-ish) spaces that were empty before local startups and tech corporations moved back in.
CPG food startups have been some of the dominant startup storylines in Buffalo in early 2026 with the news of funding rounds and national growth.
While that is good news for the companies and their investors, it also highlights another feature of Buffalo’s high-growth innovation economy: the impact of successful startup companies on commercial real estate.
“Venture-backed startups have brought new momentum to Buffalo’s commercial real estate market,” said Kyle Ciminelli, president of Ciminelli Real Estate. “They’re innovative, fast-growing, and committed to building their futures here.”
From formerly moribund factories to formerly empty office spaces, here are the startups that are creating pockets of vibrancy in Buffalo.
FoodNerd and Top Seedz
Just as Buffalo has a vibrant sub-economy of food manufacturers who make things here and sell them across the world (see the shorthand list in this article!), a new group of innovators are creating significant production footprints in Buffalo.
That includes FoodNerd, which recently closed a $7.5M Series Seed round and is preparing to enter 800 grocers this year, which will make its proprietary and nutritious baby snacks from a 28,000-square-foot factory in Newstead. That plant last housed pharmaceutical-grade production for Athenex, but had gone empty when that company’s business collapsed.
It also includes Top Seedz, which already has a national footprint, and moved last year from a small space in Cheektowaga into a 35,000-square-foot factory on Oak Street.
Viridi, CleanFiber, The Rookery, KAV
There may not be a better example of neighborhood-revitalization-through-startups than Viridi, the maker of battery-powered generators, which started as a small R&D project and since grown to an important player in the global push toward electrification. Founded and led by Jon Williams, a longtime Buffalo construction executive and real estate developer, Viridi has turned an empty former American Axle factory on Buffalo’s East Side into a thrumming clean energy campus with multiple buildings and production lines.
A similar story has played out along Route 5 in Blasdell, where CleanFiber has thoroughly renovated a factory that once housed Bethlehem Steel productions before falling empty. CleanFiber employs approximately 70 people and keeps millions of tons of recycled cardboard out of the landfill each year by turning it into building insulation.
A medical device commercialization cluster - which began in the Red Shed building on Northland Avenue - is starting to emerge on Buffalo's East Side. The building is the home to Egret Healthcare Ventures, The Rookery, Vicora Inc. and Ampullae.
KAV, a 3-D manufacturer of custom bicycle helmets, moved into newly renovated space at 225 Louisiana St. near the Buffalo River in 2025. The facility will be home to KAV’s primary production space.
Odoo and Ingram Micro
In the startup-adjacent technology world, global business software company Odoo crested 400 local employees last year out of its new East Coast HQ in seven floors at Fountain Plaza in downtown Buffalo. Odoo started with a solitary Buffalo-based worker, managing director Nick Kosinski, in 2020.
Ingram MIcro is a new entrant to downtown Buffalo as it prepares to move its 1,000 local employees to its new local HQ at 257 W. Genesee St. this year. The move is a little different from others on this list in that Ingram Micro has long had a large local presence and is primarily shifting existing employees from the suburbs to downtown, but the move coincides with a dedicated push to grow its headcount in Buffalo as one of the company’s primary North American hubs.
The Golisano Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship is moving into the vacant former Buffalo News building in downtown Buffalo, completely renovating the 150,000=square-foot structure and preparing to welcome its first class of students in fall 2026.
ACV Auctions, HelixIntel, Centivo, OneBridge, Kyklo, LenderLogix
Ten years ago, you could barely fill out an NBA roster with ACV Auctions’ local employees. Now the company has hundreds of employees at its headquarters on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus – and recently pledged to add 100 new jobs to that location.
HelixIntel, poised to enter a period of robust growth, closed an $11 million Series A round in 2023 and moved the next year into new space at 550 Seneca St. in Larkinville, where about half of its 26 employees are located. Helix is one of several software startups that began with small teams at the University at Buffalo’s Incubator@CBLS facility before moving into their own digs.
Speaking of Larkinville, leading mortgage software firm LenderLogix continues to grow out of its chic headquarters at 760 Seneca St., where it moved in 2021.
Centivo, which now has more than 100 employees in Buffalo, moved that team plus its administrative HQ into the Fairmont Creamery building in 2024
Another downtown success story is OneBridge, which creates tech-enabled benefits solutions, and has steadily expanded its presence into new floors at the Crosby Building in downtown Buffalo since it moved there in 2022.
Kyklo moved its headquarters to Buffalo in 2020 and proceeded to raise $8.5 million in funding before moving two years later into a space on Main Street in downtown Buffalo. In 2024, the company was acquired by Epicor but retained its local presence.
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