The Grant Maze Solved: Marquette-based Syncurrent’s AI revolution

For years, local governments have been caught in a “paperwork purgatory,” losing out on millions in funding because they lacked the staff to navigate the federal grant maze. 

Marquette-based Syncurrent is ending that struggle. The AI firm has developed a high-velocity platform that replaces the manual slog of grant hunting with a single, “smart” interface, ensuring that no community—regardless of its size—leaves critical money on the table.

Since its launch in 2023, the startup’s technology has become an essential lifeline for a growing roster of tribal and municipal governments nationwide. By automating the discovery and application process, Syncurrent is leveling the playing field, helping small-town leaders secure the infrastructure and social service funds they once would have missed.

The company’s momentum reached a fever pitch this winter as it cemented its status as a regional powerhouse. By locking in a strategic partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) and deepening its alliance with the Michigan Municipal League (MML) in February, Syncurrent’s AI has become the go-to resource for more than  850 municipalities across both states.

“Having the capacity to find, apply for, and sort of understand the whole nuance and process of grants is complicated. Really, other than the big communities in Massachusetts, most communities don’t have dedicated staff. So we felt like this could be a real value-add for our members,” said Katie McCue, who is deputy executive director for the Massachusetts Municipal Association. 

The Idea 

Before working with communities from Massachusetts to the Pacific Northwest, Syncurrent was merely a concept in the mind of Northern Michigan University student Dhruv C. Patel.

While studying organizational science and working as a teaching assistant in his junior year, he attended a guest lecture by Innovate Marquette CEO Joe Thiel.

“A year or two before OpenAI even released ChatGPT, (Thiel) was talking about how this company was making incredible advancements on AI models and how the class needed to learn all about it now if they wanted to stay competitive,” Patel said. “And I chased him out of the classroom and pitched him on mentoring me and teaching me everything he knows about business. And thankfully, he took me up on it.”

The Startup

With Thiel’s guidance, Patel founded his first startup, called HIVE, in 2021. The company acted broadly as a consultancy for economic development.

“And later on, we spun off a tool to help economic development organizations and eventually tribes do this really cool economic development calculation on small businesses,” he said. “And the customers of that business came back to us, and they were like, ‘We kind of like the product, but we need to find funding in order to buy it.’

“And when you hear your customer over and over again saying we want this service instead of what you’re offering, you kind of naturally start exploring what that model could be, which ultimately became Syncurrent.”

In 2023, Patel and his co-founder, Matthew Jaquez, launched Syncurrent to address the challenges organizations reported while working with HIVE. Their first clients were tribal nations that have been historically underresourced compared to other government entities.

By cold-calling and networking through Innovate Marquette, Syncurrent secured contracts with the Yakama Nation and Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. Those two led to more nations, more contracts, and more trust among leaders across Indian Country.

Scaling in the Municipal Market

In November 2024, with a growing team and a base of 50 tribal clients nationwide, Syncurrent received a knock on the door from Thiel. Beside him stood Dr. Basil Gooden, then undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development agency.

“I really appreciate and love that you’re working with tribes,” Patel recalled Gooden saying. “How quickly do you think you can expand to the municipal government front?”

The conversation that followed led to the first AI partnership in the agency’s history and the creation of a pilot program studying, in part, how Michigan’s municipal governments captured funding and what roadblocks they encountered. Launched in early 2025, the program piloted Syncurrent’s services in 10 local governments, including Marquette, Escanaba, Chippewa County and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

“It was our first time doing a project at such a scale, and I was a little intimidated. We hosted a press announcement, and three days after, I think we had 78 municipal governments reach out via email and phone call.”

Municipal Leagues

Soon after, Syncurrent entered talks with the Michigan Municipal League and the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (MI-LEO) regarding their free grant discovery portal, MI Funding Hub.

The tool pulled grant information from public databases into a searchable online interface, though, through the program’s initial vendor, the hub only collected information on federal grant opportunities. Syncurrent offered AI integration that could more efficiently pull information from federal sources as well as dozens of state agencies.

“By the time we met with [Syncurrent] initially,” said Shanna Draheim, policy director at the Michigan Municipal League, “their tool was already doing work with the tribes … and was already more advanced than certainly what we were doing manually and what our previous vendor was providing.”

In July 2025, Syncurrent announced a partnership with the MML and MI-LEO that would integrate the company’s AI tool directly into the backend of MI Funding Hub. With the integration, governments still had access to the tool free of charge, with the option to contract directly with Syncurrent if they required more in-depth, ongoing and personalized services.

“It has made the database more accurate and more robust,” Draheim said. “There are more grants in there, they’re more accurate, they’re more updated, and they’re getting that information sooner, which helps [users] apply. They’re not finding out two days before.”

In February, Syncurrent deepened its partnership with MML through a new revenue-sharing model and updates to its online interface.

The Massachusetts Municipal League

The company entered its second statewide deal last November, announcing a strategic partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

Unlike its direct backend integration with MI Funding Hub, the company’s work with the MMA has been “an active partnership,” McCue said. Rather than offering services through an online portal, Syncurrent has reached out directly to member communities to demonstrate the potential of its services.

The partnership was announced “through advertising in our monthly publication,” which is called The Beacon and is a pretty widely read publication around Massachusetts, McCue said.

“We created a special place on our website for Syncurrent, and a couple of other companies that we’re entering into a similar kind of partnership relationship with. Syncurrent also held a webinar for us explaining that there’s a lot of opportunity out there at the federal and state level, and how they can be helpful in finding those opportunities,” she said.

What’s Next

In addition to the MMA and MML, Patel said Syncurrent is in talks with another half-dozen clients and regional partners across the country.

Thiel, Patel’s mentor and an “unofficial co-founder” of the Marquette-based firm, said that Patel and Syncurrent are a rare breed among the startups he has worked with through Innovate Marquette.

“If you look at the [growth trajectory] he’s been on, he’s been on that trajectory the whole entire time and has the potential to scale a company that would be one of the largest ones ever to come out of the U.P., or even Michigan.” Thiel said. “It’s super exciting, and I’m really, really proud of him.”