The city of Brownsville’s Audit and Oversight Committee is conducting a review of an incentive agreement between the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation and 9Point8 Capital, a space-related venture capital firm with operations in Brownsville.
GBIC and 9Point8 announced in November 2021 that the company would be setting up communications, public relations and marketing offices in Brownsville and eventually expand operations here. 9Point8 founding partner Brant Arseneau said at the time that he chose Brownsville because he sensed the city was on its way to becoming the “Silicon Valley of space.” The company is headquartered in New York City.
City Commissioner At-Large “A” John Cowen Jr., who currently sits on the city’s audit and oversight committee, said the audit of the contract between 9Point8 and GBIC is being done at the recommendation of City Auditor Keilah Fokertsma.
“We review her suggestions and this is one of them,” he said. “This was something that was brought to the Audit and Oversight Committee to possibly take a deeper dive and to make sure that everything is in compliance with rules and regulations. … GBIC does its own review, but this is something that’s an additional layer of oversight.”
The committee has oversight over the city’s economic development organizations GBIC and the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, the Brownsville Public Utility Board and other city entities, Cowen noted. He described it as a “standard audit” at this point and said nothing has been turned up so far suggesting a possible violation of the rules.
Cowen said he couldn’t be more specific about details of the audit, which was the subject of executive session discussion during the committee’s most recent meeting.
“I believe the intent was they were going to help stimulate that economy down here,” he said of 9Point8. “They have a contract that lays out their responsibilities and GBIC’s responsibilities. We’re doing a review of that contract just to make sure everything is aligned.”
Arseneau, who said he spent nearly 25 years at JPMorgan, as an electronic trading expert before becoming interested in the space industry, said in 2021 that 9Point8 would manage a group of firms specializing in launching space start-up companies and prepare them for infusions of venture capital. Among the group of firms would be a hatchery/incubator means to start companies from scratch and nurture them to solve specific space-industry-related problems, he said.
Arseneau also co-founded Spaced Ventures, a digital crowd-funding platform for space and technology start-ups that set up shop in Brownsville in 2020.
“As the space community evolves and grows here we’ll have more front office deploying capital here,” he said in 2021. “That’s one of the key values we believe 9Point8 brings, is once there are multiple companies here to fund, we want to fund them.”
