Uncut Lab

Today, we’re stepping away from the desk and into the Boston startup ecosystem.

We’re taking the day to connect, exchange ideas, and build relationships with the founders, innovators, investors, and ecosystem builders shaping what’s next for Boston and the region.

Because sometimes the best work happens when you step away from the screen and get in the room.


Who should we be connecting with? Tag them below or drop a name in the comments.

Quick question for anyone who touches program data for a city or town, CDC, regional chamber, workforce board, or a council of governments.

How many systems does your data actually live in right now? Site reports. Labor numbers. Surveys. Grant files. One spreadsheet holding it together, if you're lucky.

I'm writing about why that's the norm, not the exception, and what it actually costs. Piece goes up later this week.

We're still smiling about this one.

Back in July, the Uncut Lab team spent an evening at UP, a rooftop garden built right in the middle of an urban park near MIT. Live dance. A mixer. A community space that turned an underused rooftop into somewhere people actually want to be.

This is the kind of placemaking we think about all the time. Not just data on a map. Real ground your community can use.

Have you been to a rooftop or pocket park like this in your town? Tell us about it.

Labor Day was Monday, not the day we posted it. We build tools that track economic data precisely. Calendars, apparently, less so. Happy belated Labor Day to everyone who kept Massachusetts running this summer!

Labor Day was earlier this week, not when we posted it. Even data people get a date wrong sometimes. Happy belated Labor Day, Massachusetts.

Connecticut just put workforce training and AI testing in the same building. Now that's interesting.

Most states fund workforce programs and tech innovation out of separate budgets, run by separate agencies, that rarely talk to each other. Connecticut just built a place where they have to.

Governor Lamont announced a 20 million dollar grant to build a 100,000 square foot innovation center in downtown Hartford, with labs and classrooms for workforce training sitting next to space for employers to test AI tools. The target industries are insurance and healthcare, both huge in Connecticut. This is the right shape for a solution. Workforce development and technology adoption keep getting treated as separate problems with separate funding streams, and that split is a big part of why so many training programs teach skills that are already out of date by the time people graduate. Putting them under one roof forces the training to track what employers are actually doing.

Find out more here: https://portal.ct.gov/governor/news/press-releases/2026/08-2026/governor-lamont-announces-investment-to-accelerate-hartfords-downtown-innovation-cluster

Tell us what you think below!

Governor Lamont Announces $20 Million Investment To Accelerate Hartford’s Downtown Innovation Cluster Press Release Homepage Governor Lamont Announces $20 Million Investment To Accelerate Hartford’s Downtown Innovation Cluster 8/13/2026 (HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Ned Lamont announced today that his administration is investing $20 million to establish a 100,000-square-foot flagship campus for the ...

Massachusetts is writing the toughest AI rules in the country, and vendors need to plan for it now.

Massachusetts is close to passing the strictest state level AI safety law in the country, buried inside its economic development bill. It requires major AI labs to submit to safety reviews every 120 days, and OpenAI is already pushing back, saying the pace creates confusion instead of safety.

The bill cleared the Senate in July and is sitting in conference committee, likely to come up in a fall session before the November election. If you sell into Massachusetts government, this is not a footnote. Build your compliance posture assuming this passes, because scrambling after the fact is expensive.

More details here: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2026/08/20/882315.htm https://malegislature.gov/PressRoom/Detail?pressReleaseId=1453

OpenAI Warns of Confusion as Massachusetts Readies Crackdown Massachusetts lawmakers are seeking to establish the nation's most stringent state-level safeguards for artificial intelligence, a proposal that's divided

We're reintroducing Uncut Lab here because our work has evolved more than our presence on this page.

Uncut Lab builds hyperlocal data intelligence for the people doing the toughest math in economic and workforce development. We're a small team of urban planners, a product designer, and several technologists. Over the next few weeks we'll introduce the people behind our platforms, the challenges we're solving, and the communities we serve.

See what's new at www.uncutlab.com

Real talk. The only labor we want to do this weekend is lifting a burger off the grill.

Happy almost Labor Day from our team. We hope your weekend is long, your traffic is short, and your snacks are plentiful.

See you back here after the holiday.

Our team had the best time at the last 2026 World Cup match head in Boston at Gillette Stadium (France vs. Morocco).

The energy was amazing. The traffic, well, that was something else.

It got us thinking about how cities and towns handle big events like this. From managing traffic to understanding the economic impact on local communities.

That connection between data and people is what drives our work. We think about how it can support workforce development, community development, and growth in our towns and cities.

It was great to be out in the community and feel that connection in person.

Tell us below. What event did you attend this summer?