This Month's Latest Tech News in Charlotte, NC - Wednesday April 30th 2025 Edition

Charlotte's AI advancements in 2025 reflect a powerful synergy between research, industry, and education, positioning the city as a southeastern innovation hub.

The launch of the Charlotte AI Institute at UNC Charlotte aims to accelerate responsible AI research across business, healthcare, and the arts, under the guidance of thought leaders like Stephanie Schuckers and George Banks.

Bank of America exemplifies local impact, with 90% employee adoption of AI-driven assistants and the Erica platform exceeding 2.5 billion client interactions since 2018, as detailed in Bank of America's scaled AI systems improve productivity.

Community events like the annual UNC Charlotte AI Summit are witnessing surging faculty engagement, fostering future-ready educators and interdisciplinary learning.

As noted by Provost Jennifer Troyer,

“The annual AI summit is a fantastic opportunity for learning, with faculty and staff showcasing and discussing innovative and practice-based approaches for AI use related to student learning.”

From banking and real estate to restaurants adopting automation, Charlotte's rapid AI adoption addresses workforce gaps and unlocks billions in regional value, as highlighted in AI innovations transform Charlotte's economy in 2025.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is taking a collaborative, community-driven approach to shaping its vision for artificial intelligence in education, gathering input from over 10,000 students, families, educators, and staff through extensive surveys and focus groups.

The findings reveal high overall familiarity with AI - 79% of respondents use it at home and 49% in the workplace - while highlighting both enthusiasm and concerns about the technology's impact on teaching, academic integrity, and student privacy.

Major takeaways include calls for AI to enhance, not replace, classroom learning; robust training for educators; and clear, ethical guidelines for implementation.

As Dr. Crystal Hill, CMS Superintendent, emphasized,

“We need to work together now to create a vision for how we can best utilize this emerging technology to support students and schools. We can chart an innovative and responsible course to use AI in service of our four pillars of excellence: academic excellence, people excellence, operational excellence, and engagement excellence.”

The district is partnering with education strategy firm ILO Group to ensure responsible integration, with a draft AI Vision Statement slated for June and public release in July 2025.

The table below summarizes key survey results shaping these next steps:

For more details on CMS's evolving strategy, review the CMS AI Vision Report, explore the district's ongoing community engagement via WCNC Charlotte's coverage of AI in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and follow updates about public input initiatives on Queen City News article on CMS public input for AI in classrooms.

Charlotte-based AvidXchange has introduced a suite of advanced AI agents to transform accounts payable (AP) automation for mid-market businesses, enhancing efficiency, control, and visibility.

The newly launched AI Approval Agent leverages historical data - such as invoice amounts and supplier details - to assess and predict approval likelihood, offering real-time insights while ensuring that final decisions remain under human oversight.

Alongside it, the AI PO Matching Agent automates the time-intensive process of matching invoice line-items to purchase orders, supporting faster and more accurate approvals, with clear visual indicators of AI intervention.

Enhanced invoice capture capabilities also allow the software to learn unique invoice data patterns, delivering approval-ready invoices and reducing manual intervention.

According to AvidXchange's 2025 Trends Report, 76% of surveyed finance leaders see AI as vital for improving efficiency and decision-making. Customer feedback has underscored the real-world impact:

“The AI-Enhanced Invoice Capture from AvidXchange is allowing our teams to enhance service to our clients. We've reduced our invoice discrepancy queue by 20% and significantly increased accuracy across our AP operations. That allows our team to redirect time and resources to strategic priorities, driving innovation to benefit the communities we serve.”

For a snapshot of AvidXchange's AI-powered accounts payable enhancements, see below:

Read the full announcement of these automation enhancements at MarketScreener's coverage of AvidXchange's AI expansion.

Advocate Health, headquartered in Charlotte and the nation's third-largest nonprofit health system, is achieving notable success by leveraging artificial intelligence across its expansive network of 69 hospitals.

With over 15,000 staff now utilizing AI-powered solutions, such as Microsoft DAX Copilot for clinical documentation and Artisight's computer vision for virtual nursing, Advocate reports significant improvements in clinician well-being, patient care, and operational efficiency.

Key outcomes include a drastic reduction in documentation time for nurses - allowing more focus on patient care - and a remarkable drop in nurse turnover rates from 13% to 3% with the support of AI-driven virtual monitoring.

These innovations not only streamline administrative tasks but also enhance patient satisfaction by enabling more engaged provider interactions and shortened hospital stays.

As Katie Barr, Advocate's Senior VP and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer, notes:

“By automating the documentation related to routine nursing tasks, we are giving time back to nurses to do what they do best – care for patients.”

Advocate's collaboration with Microsoft on Project Nursing, still in early deployment, further underscores a commitment to nurse-led AI innovation and scalable impact.

For a deeper dive into the top-performing healthcare AI companies recognized in 2025, see this comprehensive review of the 25 leading healthtech pioneers.

To learn more about Advocate's AI advances and cost-saving clinical wins, visit this detailed MedCity News spotlight on Advocate Health's five AI-driven benefits.

For the system's perspective on easing administrative burden through AI, explore Advocate's official announcement of its partnership with Microsoft.

Bank of America is reshaping workplace productivity in Charlotte and beyond by scaling artificial intelligence (AI) systems enterprise-wide, with over 90% of its 213,000 global employees now utilizing the Erica for Employees AI assistant - an initiative credited with reducing IT support calls by more than 50% and enabling significant operational efficiencies.

The bank's AI strategy, detailed in Bank of America's official announcement on AI adoption, encompasses everything from client-facing digital assistants to generative AI-powered coding tools, which have delivered over 20% gains in developer productivity.

Key platforms like Erica, askMERRILL®, and askPRIVATE BANK® collectively saw over 23 million employee interactions in 2024, while The Academy - an AI-driven training system - supported more than one million client interaction simulations.

The bank's technology investment is substantial, with $4 billion dedicated to new AI and tech initiatives in 2025 out of a $13 billion annual tech budget (learn more about the investment and outcomes).

These efforts have also propelled Bank of America's intellectual property portfolio, now comprising nearly 7,400 patents - over 1,200 of which focus on AI and machine learning.

As Chief Technology & Information Officer Aditya Bhasin notes,

“AI is having a transformative effect on employee efficiency and operational excellence. Our use of AI at scale and around the world enables us to further enhance our capabilities, improve employee productivity and client service, and drive business growth.”

To review a full breakdown of Bank of America's AI-powered productivity gains and innovation strategies, visit this comprehensive sector analysis.

The remedies phase of the landmark DOJ-Google antitrust trial has firmly shifted from traditional search concerns to the transformative influence of artificial intelligence, with the Department of Justice arguing that Google is using its vast search index - over 100 million gigabytes of data - to cement dominance in both search and AI. Central to this debate is the integration of Google's Gemini AI across devices, made possible by exclusive agreements such as the “enormous sums” paid monthly to Samsung for preinstallation, with similar deals seen as maintaining systemic barriers for rivals.

DOJ experts and competitors like OpenAI and Perplexity testified about the high costs - upwards of $1 billion and years of effort - required to independently build robust search indexes, with OpenAI's Nick Turley highlighting Google's refusal to license data for real-time AI development.

The government proposes remedies ranging from mandating real-time data syndication for rivals, ending exclusionary default deals, to a potential divestiture of the Chrome browser, triggers for which major AI players including Yahoo and Perplexity have expressed acquisition interest.

Google counters, calling the remedies “so extraordinary” that CEO Sundar Pichai testified forced sharing would amount to “de facto divestiture” of its core intellectual property, threatening innovation and security, yet market data underscores the competition: as of March 2025, ChatGPT boasts 160 million daily and about 600 million monthly users, compared to Gemini's 35 million daily and 350 million monthly users.

“We are here to restore competition to these markets,” said DOJ attorney Daniel Dahlquist, emphasizing that the goal is not a Pyrrhic victory but real change.

To explore more on how the trial's outcome could reshape the tech landscape, see NPR's comprehensive coverage on why the Google trial is now about AI, Tech Policy Press's in-depth analysis of the first week's testimony in the Google antitrust remedies trial, and The New York Times's detailed look at the case's implications for the future AI race.

Visa has launched a high-profile pilot in Charlotte, positioning the city as a critical testbed for the company's ambitious AI-powered payment agents. This initiative, dubbed "Intelligent Commerce," enables AI agents - developed in partnership with leading firms like Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Mistral - to autonomously find and purchase goods and services within user-defined spending limits.

Visa's five building blocks for this program - authentication, tokenization, payment instructions, personalization, and real-time risk signals - ensure transactions remain secure and highly customizable, reflecting Visa's three decades of AI-based fraud prevention.

As Jack Forestell, Visa's Chief Product and Strategy Officer, puts it,

“We think this could be really important - transformational, on the order of magnitude of the advent of e-commerce itself.”

The system allows users to authorize specific spending ceilings and merchant types, while AI agents can access consented transaction history to tailor recommendations.

This move not only streamlines routine and complex purchases (think groceries or travel), but it also gives emerging AI developers a competitive entry point against industry giants like Amazon and Google.

The broader rollout, expected next year, will leverage Visa's established global tokenization network and trusted payment rails, setting the stage for Charlotte to shape the next era of frictionless, AI-driven digital commerce.

For more detail on the technology powering this shift, read how Visa's Intelligent Commerce APIs let AI shop and pay directly for you, dive into the industry-wide adoption with TechCrunch's report on Visa and Mastercard's AI-powered shopping ecosystems, and explore the broader Charlotte pilot from the original news announcement.

The recent Charlotte conference showcased the power of AI for social good as researchers from Katz School and partner institutions worked to overcome language barriers and advance STEM outreach, aligning with the IEEE Honor Society's 120th anniversary and its mission to support inclusivity and professional development.

Projects presented at the North Carolina Space Symposium illustrated how AI and machine learning are being leveraged by students and faculty to address real-world challenges, such as using wavelet neural networks to predict dark matter halo formation and CRISPR to adapt plants for lunar regolith, while Gold Rush Robotics from UNC Charlotte competed in the IEEE SoutheastCon Hardware Challenge with autonomous mining robots - demonstrating Charlotte's role at the intersection of community engagement and cutting-edge technology.

As Amy Michael, IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu program manager, highlighted, the society now boasts nearly 280 chapters worldwide and over 100,000 hours of annual STEM service, cultivating a sense of collective purpose:

“My favorite part of being an HKN member is the sense of community. Being part of a big family that works together to help students and promote professional development is incredibly fulfilling.”

Participation at forums like IEEE-HKN's landmark events celebrating 120 years, the NC Space Symposium student projects, and IEEE SoutheastCon conference details illustrates how Charlotte's academic community and tech leaders are actively bridging language gaps and driving the future of social impact through AI-powered initiatives.

Charlotte's healthcare systems are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) at an accelerated pace to enhance efficiency, access, and the quality of patient care in 2025.

AI is making significant inroads into nursing practice by improving diagnostics, treatment planning, and patient management; current applications already include speech recognition and data mining to support care decisions.

However, while 30% of nurses are aware of AI in clinical settings, a notable 70% still lack structured training, highlighting the urgent need for educational initiatives to fully leverage these technologies (Top 5 nursing trends shaping health care in 2025).

Meanwhile, telehealth continues to bridge gaps in care access - 60% of consumers now prefer virtual visits, which not only improve convenience and lower emergency costs but also help alleviate the ongoing nursing shortage expected to reach up to 450,000 registered nurses nationally by 2025.

The commitment to patient-centered care sees further inspiration from the hospitality industry, where AI and analytics personalize experiences while hospital-based hospitality teams focus on courtesy, empathy, and human connection, driving better patient outcomes; as one industry leader notes,

"We're in the health care business, but first and foremost, we're in the people business."

Additionally, Charlotte health facilities are experimenting with robotics and AI-enabled automation, following national trends such as robotics-focused rebrands in healthcare, to improve operational efficiency and infection control (Breezy Med emerges: Robotics rebrands for health care).

As these advancements take hold, Charlotte's healthcare community stands at the forefront of transformative innovation that promises measurable gains in both clinical and patient experience.

Charlotte's healthcare community is experiencing a surge of urgency around artificial intelligence (AI) governance and training, as local health systems rapidly implement AI-powered tools for diagnostics, administrative efficiency, and patient engagement.

North Carolina health leaders are proactively addressing the ethical and legal risks - such as bias, privacy, and over-reliance - associated with AI in clinical settings.

A notable example is Duke Health's formal committee vetting AI tools for bias and functionality, which followed the detection of disparities in a sepsis algorithm's treatment recommendations.

As state and national lawmakers scramble to keep pace - with over 250 healthcare AI policy bills introduced in the first quarter of 2025 and a patchwork of new regulations across states - organizations like the AMA are prioritizing the development of best practices and providing a collaborative learning platform on AI governance for clinical technology leaders.

“Not only do I truly believe that AI can really improve health care and health, I also believe we need AI to improve health care and improve health. We are looking at an aging population and an overburdened workforce that's only going to get worse.”

said Christina Silcox, Research Director for Digital Health at the Duke-Margolis Institute.

A recent report on North Carolina's health AI oversight emphasizes the push for state-level legislation balancing innovation with safeguards, while the AMA STEPS Forward AI Governance Learning Collaborative brings providers together for system-level change.

For a broader look at legislative trends and compliance challenges emerging nationally, see the Health AI Policy Tracker for structured summaries of new AI laws.

The community continues to call for clear frameworks, workforce training, and policies that ensure AI's benefits are delivered ethically and equitably.

The CarolinaCISO ORBIE Awards are recognized as the premier honor for chief information security officers in the Carolinas, spotlighting exceptional leadership and innovation in IT security.

Established in 1998, the ORBIE Awards have celebrated over 800 winners and nearly 5,000 finalists nationally, with the Carolina chapter bringing together top security executives at its annual ceremony.

The selection process emphasizes peer review and evaluates leadership excellence, impact on enterprise security, and engagement with the broader business community, as detailed in the Inspire ORBIE Awards overview.

Recent awards ceremonies, such as those in Houston and the Pacific Northwest, highlight categories including Super Global, Global, Large Enterprise, Enterprise, Corporate, and Leadership, and underscore the value of collaboration.

As PacificNorthwestCISO Chair Chuck Markarian expressed,

“Great CISOs recognize that the power of collaboration lies in trusted relationships. The ORBIE® Awards embody this by inspiring, connecting, and honoring CISOs for their leadership and the value they bring to businesses through enterprise security.”

Find more about past winners and categories in the ORBIE archive of finalists and winners.

For Charlotte's CISO community, the 2025 event - to be held at Embassy Suites in Raleigh-Durham - will once again provide an exclusive platform for leaders to be recognized and amplify best practices across the region's rapidly advancing security landscape; full event details and nomination opportunities can be explored via the official CarolinaCISO ORBIE Awards page.

Charlotte's technology sector stands out for its balance of rapid innovation and careful, community-driven oversight. The appointment of I-Sah Hsieh as North Carolina's first AI governance and policy executive signals the state's commitment to building responsible, secure, and ethical frameworks for AI deployment, aligning efforts with privacy and data protection imperatives as outlined in the official announcement from NCDIT.

Simultaneously, Charlotte's flourishing startup ecosystem is earning national attention, with research expenditures at UNC Charlotte reaching $92 million in 2023, venture capital investment surging to $1.5 billion across 261 deals, and a 46% increase in federal funding for local tech businesses, as detailed in the Charlotte Startup Ecosystem Growth & Opportunities report.

The public sector is embracing AI as well, piloting projects with OpenAI to enhance government services while encouraging transparency and human oversight - for instance, North Carolina actively supports AI literacy programs and community engagement in policymaking, leading by example as shown in recent policy analyses of state AI guidance.

As Charlotte navigates opportunities in AI, health technology, and education, and addresses risks such as privacy, bias, and workforce readiness, the city is setting standards for other regions by fostering collaboration across government, academia, and industry.

The outlook for tech talent remains bright - with robust job training, scholarships, and flexible financing available for Nucamp bootcamps, local learners are uniquely positioned to contribute to - and benefit from - Charlotte's community-centered, innovative tech momentum.