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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday designated 31 technology hubs spread across 32 states and Puerto Rico to help spur innovation and create jobs in the industries that are concentrated in these areas.

“We’re going to invest in critical technologies like biotechnology, critical materials, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing — so the U.S. will lead the world again in innovation across the board,” President Joe Biden said. “I truly believe this country is about to take off.”

“We’re doing this from coast to coast, and in the heartland and red states and blue states, small towns, cities of all sizes,” Biden added. “All this is part of my strategy to invest in America and invest in Americans.”

The tech hubs are the result of a process the Commerce Department launched in May to distribute a total of $500 million in grants to cities.

The $500 million came from a $10 billion authorization in last year’s CHIPS and Science Act to stimulate investments in new technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotech. It’s an attempt to expand tech investment that is largely concentrated around a few U.S. cities — Austin, Texas; Boston; New York; San Francisco; and Seattle — to the rest of the country.

Proponents of the program say these investments can tap into pools of workers and economic resources that are not reaching their full potential and improve the U.S. economy as well as its technological abilities.

It remains to be seen if dispatching money to more remote places, which struggle with issues like an outflow of young workers, will ultimately be the most efficient way to use government funding to promote technological gains.

The 31 finalists were chosen from nearly 400 applicants, the Commerce Department said. They include proposals to manufacture semiconductors in New York and Oregon, design autonomous systems for transportation and agriculture in Oklahoma, research biotechnology in Indiana and process critical minerals in Missouri.

“I have to say, in my entire career in public service, I have never seen as much interest in any initiative than this one,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters during a Sunday conference call to preview the announcement.

“No matter where I go or who I meet with — CEOs, governors, senators, congresspeople, university presidents — everyone wants to tell me about their application and how excited they are,” she said.

The program, formally known as the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub Program, ties into the president’s economic argument that people should be able to find good jobs where they live and that opportunity should be spread across the country rather than be concentrated. The White House has sought to elevate that message and highlight Biden’s related policies as the Democratic president undertakes his 2024 reelection bid.

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Democrat majority leader of the U.S. Senate, said in an interview Monday that the tech hub program, which he devised with Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., had helped secure bipartisan support for the CHIPS and Science Act last year.

The legislation included $200 billion for basic scientific research and more than $75 billion in grants and tax credits for semiconductor companies. It aimed to lower the country’s dependence on foreign manufacturers of computer chips and other critical technology.

Schumer said “it was a very big selling point” for the overall bill that the funding was not just going to “three or four cities in blue states.”

“There was such divisiveness in the country, the coasts and non-coasts, and a lot of it was because all these new tech and high-end industries were locating on the coasts,” he said. “And so we crafted the tech hub program to be spread throughout the middle of America.”

Schumer was touring Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse on Monday to celebrate the inclusion of two New York proposals, one focused on semiconductor manufacturing and the other on battery technology.

“There’s a lot of talent here that’s not used,” he added.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, described the tech hub program as “a grand experiment” in industrial policy.

Muro said the United States had seen the incredible strength of concentrating technology investments in a few key places like Silicon Valley, where companies in related businesses can benefit by clustering together. But those investment patterns have also resulted in tremendous imbalances in the country’s economy, where “only a few places are truly prospering and much talent and much innovation is left on the table,” he said.

“This is a whole different map,” Muro said, adding, “I think we need to make some experiments and some of them will probably be great investments.”

The announcements tried to balance several competing goals of the tech hubs, including whether to invest in as many regions as possible or whether to concentrate spending in a few areas in hopes of engineering radical economic improvement in those areas. They also reflected the high interest in the program from regional officials and their representatives in Congress.

The administration is also trying to do as much as possible with initial funding for the program, which remains well below the maximum levels lawmakers set in the CHIPS bill. While that bill authorized Congress to fund a variety of programs, lawmakers still need to approve actual money for many of the tech hub investments, as well as other programs.

Eleven of the 31 designated tech hubs received strategy development grants and 18 other consortia received grants as well to “further mature their plans and achieve designation in the future,” according to the U.S. Economic Development Administration. Among those receiving a grant is the Southeast Biotech Collaborative Strategy Development Consortium led by the University of Mississippi. Its applicant-defined regions include the Huntsville, Ala., and Memphis metropolitan statistical areas. The latter includes St. Francis and Crittenden counties in Arkansas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The consortium “will develop a regional strategy to advance biomanufacturing, biologistics and precision population health to reduce national dependence on foreign suppliers and reduce drug shortages,” according to the Economic Development Administration.

The 31 tech hubs reach Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Montana, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, Maryland, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Minnesota, Louisiana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, New York, Nevada, Missouri, Oregon, Vermont, Ohio, Maine, Washington and Puerto Rico.

Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville of The Associated Press, Ana Swanson and Jim Tankersley of the New York Times and by staff writers at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.