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Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Announcing the Dave Mawhinney Founders First Legacy Fund!
Extraordinary founders are the catalyst for transformative innovation. With the Dave Mawhinney Founders First Endowed Legacy Fund, we honor the legacy of Dave by embodying his unwavering commitment to putting founders first—providing not just capital, but the deep support, mentorship and ecosystem that empowers visionary entrepreneurs to realize their boldest ambitions.
Just as Dave observes that exceptional founders are the bedrock of groundbreaking companies, the Dave Mawhinney Founders First Endowed Legacy Fund will provide pre-seed or seed stage grants to CMU startups that demonstrate remarkable potential, resilience, vision and commitment to the Pittsburgh region.
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
DashStrom Wins Second Place and $75K at UpPrize Finals
DashStrom, a Pittsburgh-based social enterprise founded by Ketaki Desai, Ph.D., addresses the youth mental health crisis through challenging play, mentorship and character-based movement programs. The company won second place and $75K at the 2025 UpPrize final showcase last week.
DashStrom's tech-enabled platform trains and deploys vetted local coaches, connects them with schools and communities, and measures impact on children’s resilience, confidence, and wellness. To date, DashStrom has served over 12,000 children nationally, including pilots in Pittsburgh schools and recreation programs.
Monday, October 27, 2025
Arda Wins Best New Product of the Year in Manufacturing Software at The Assembly Show
Arda, creator of cards that are scannable triggers for automated, AI replenishment workflows, has been chosen as Best New Product of the Year in Manufacturing Software at the recent The Assembly Show. CMU alumnus Uriel Eisen is the President of Arda, also a 2024 VentureBridge Startup .Monday, October 27, 2025
The Swartz Center Hosts: From Passion to Purpose - A Journey Through Social Enterprise With Leah Lizarondo
Over 200 Carnegie Mellon students packed the CMU Swartz Center on Monday, October 27 to hear from CMU Heinz alumna Leah Lizarondo, Swartz Center Entrepreneur-In-Residence, Founder and Board Emeritus of Food Rescue Hero and Co-Founder and Board Emeritus of 412 Food Rescue, as she walked through her journey of translating social impact to reality.
During the discussion, which was moderated by Steven Guo, Swartz Center Program Manager for its VentureBridge program, Leah discussed the Swartz Center's McGinnis Venture Competition and its Social Enterprise Prize track, as well as the pathway to entering the $1M Hult Prize—the largest global pitch competition for students with startups addressing our biggest challenges.
Friday, October 24, 2025
The Corporate Startup Lab Hosts 7th Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum: AGE of NexT: Beyond Use Cases
On Wednesday, October 22nd, CMU’s Corporate Startup Lab (CSL), together with Deloitte, hosted the 7th Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum: AGE of NexT: Beyond Use Cases, which continued conversations on how markets and companies are being reimagined, driven by new innovations, advanced technologies, emerging companies and the continued adoption of AI.
Participants and guests were welcomed by CSL Director Jim Jen, and introductions were given by Isabelle Bajeux Besnainou, Dean of the Tepper School of Business, and Meredith Grelli, Interim Executive Director, CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, who immediately led the first discussion, 'Solving New and Complex Problems with AI and Robotics'.
The Forum explored how companies are advancing beyond experimentation to achieve results at scale. Topics of discussion included how companies are rethinking talent models, value chains and measurement systems with agentic capabilities.
The final session ended with an insightful discussion on 'Realizing the Promise of AI: Practical Lessons from the Trenches', moderated by Jeffrey Brashear and featuring Dr. John Rares Almasan (TIAA), Christopher Martin (BNY), and Julia McDowell (Highmark Health).
Participants enjoyed a networking reception at the CMU Swartz Center after the event.
Friday, October 17, 2025
Announcing the 2025-27 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows Cohort!
The CMU Swartz Center is excited and proud to announce the newest cohort of James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows, twelve first year graduate students from various programs across Carnegie Mellon University. The students, having exemplified a dedicated passion for entrepreneurship with consistent involvement in entrepreneurial activities on campus, accepted the offer to become a Swartz Fellow after a rigorous application process, which ended on October 5.
The new Swartz Fellows are (in order of above photo):
- Edward Chanquín, School of Computer Science/HCI (Rales Fellow)
- Alexander DesPois, Tepper School of Business
- Rachel Hagani, Tepper School of Business
- Abdullah Jawhar, MS, Artificial Intelligence/Mechanical Engineering
- Siddhant Joshi, School of Computer Science/ MS, Artificial Intellicence & Innovation
- Surya Kukkapalli, Tepper School of Business
- YJ Lin, Tepper School of Business
- Kousalya Mohan, Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS)
- Jona Naqo, Master of Science in Software Management (MSSM) - Silicon Valley
- Malikah Nathani, Heinz College, MS, Artificial Intelligence Systems Management
- Motolani Oladitan, Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS)
- Mehri Sadri, Heinz College, MS, Data Analytics for Puboic Policy (MSPPM-DA)
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Amazon Partners with Carnegie Mellon University for AI Research Hub
Carnegie Mellon University and Amazon have partnered to launch the CMU-Amazon AI Innovation Hub. Amazon will provide an undisclosed amount of funding for research projects, fellowship and other initiatives, including workshops and symposiums. The collaboration will advance research in generative AI, robotics, natural language processing and cloud computing while fostering innovation in foundational and emerging technologies.
Friday, October 10, 2025
CMU Startup Week Recap!
In a matter of five weeks, the CMU Swartz Center team—with over 35 organizing partners—pulled together the largest, most ambitious entrepreneurship event in Carnegie Mellon History—CMU Startup Week—with 25 programs (17 on waitlist) over 3.5 days and 2,000 unique registrants the week of September 23-26. From intimate investor roundtables for faculty founders, to closed door visa strategy sessions with immigration attorneys, to 3x standing room only events in Carnegie Mellon’s largest auditoriums. The Swartz Center team, along with founder, alumni, investor, corporate and University partners, flooded campus with entrepreneurial energy like never before.
In the end, over 400 meetings between founders and investors were facilitated. Additionally, a thousand of the most talented students in the world were introduced to CMU startups looking to hire. Over 200 venture funds, corporate innovation groups and institutional investors participated.
The AI & Robotics Venture Day event, organized in partnership with Pittsburgh's Innovation Works, took place on September 24, which included startup pitch presentations and a panel discussion. A networking event, closed only to Investors and presenting startup presenters, took place at the Swartz Center to wrap up the day.
The Lab to Market event on September 25 was a curated gathering of deep tech investors for an exclusive look at CMU's bleeding edge research and promising research-driven startups. The day-long event spotlighted breakthrough ventures emerging from CMU labs, including those led by CMU faculty, PhDs and postdocs—advancing the frontier in AI, robotics, cybersecurity, healthcare and beyond.
Friday, October 10, 2025
Seegrid Raises $25M in New Funding Round
Seegrid, a Pittsburgh developer of autonomous forklifts and other warehouse robotics backed by the region's largest supermarket chain has raised almost $25M, halfway to a $50M goal, according to the company's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It came shortly after Seegrid announced a new CEO.
The technology behind the self-driving vehicles, Seegrid Vision, is the brainchild of world-renowned, visionary roboticist Dr. Hans Moravec. After decades of perfecting vision technology at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, Hans founded Seegrid in 2003.
Thursday, October 9, 2025
BlastPoint Secures $10.6M Growth Funding
BlastPoint, an AI-driven customer intelligence platform co-founded by CMU alumni Alison Alvarez and Tomer Borenstein, has announced this week that it has secured $10.6M in growth funding. The investment was led by MissionOG, with participation from Curql Fund, Michigan Capital Network and other existing investors.
The funding comes as demand for AI-powered customer engagement tools continues to surge, and BlastPoint will use the funding to further develop and deploy its next-generation prediction technology.
Friday, October 3, 2025
ETC Faculty Member and Robotics Institute Ph.D. Vivian Shen Changing the Way Technology Feels
CMU Robotics Ph.D. and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow (2020-21) Vivian Shen is working to change the way technology feels. While completing her Ph.D., she is also starting a new role as an Assistant Professor at CMU's ETC. Shen will begin teaching courses in the spring, with potential offerings in applied AI and physical computing. Both areas, she says, reflect her core interests in building interactive systems.
Friday, October 3, 2025
Gather AI Unveils Dual-use HQ for Warehouse Tech Innovation
Local startup Gather AI opened up its doors to the tech ecosystem, showcasing a built-out, dual-use headquarters at a recent open house. The company develops software for pre-existing robotics, mainly drones, for warehouse inventory management and itemization.
Thursday, October 2, 2025
Astrobotic Partners with Honda to Explore Lunar Power Solutions
North Side-based Astrobotic Technology Inc. has entered into a new joint development agreement, this time with an automotive giant.
Astrobotic is partnering with American Honda Motor Co. on a joint feasibility study that aims to see if Honda’s regenerative fuel cell system can be integrated with Astrobotic technologies under development — namely its Vertical Solar Array Technology and its LunaGrid service.
Friday, September 26, 2025
Recap From CMU's Startup Week!
The inaugural Carnegie Mellon University Startup Week, a multiday celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation, and frontier tech hosted by the Swart Center for Entrepreneurship and cross-campus partners, hit big this week with a diverse line up of events highlighting founders from all stages, researchers, regional partners and VC firms across the entire ecosystem. The program consisted of 25+ events held over the course of four days from September 23-26.
The program kicked off on Tuesday with a faculty breakfast with Pear VC, office hours with Gigascale Capital, founder interviews with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and an Entrepreneurship through Acquisition talk given by Tepper School of Business adjunct professor Len Caric.
The AI Robotics Venture Day, held on Wednesday afternoon in collaboration with Pittsburgh's Innovation Works, included five hundred investors, corporate partners, founders from around the country and ecosystem partners from the region, who packed CMU's McConomy Auditorium to hear 30, two minute pitches from the most promising AI + Robotics startups, as well as a Venture Capital panel on the investment headwinds in the space.
Investors and startup presenters from the AI Robotics Venture Day showcase were treated to a bagpipe processional back to the Swartz Center for investor meetings and a reception.
The Lab to Market event, held on Thursday, included panel discussions throughout the day on topics ranging from Embodied AI to Intelligent Systems & Advanced Materials for Industrial Transformation, and more. Tepper School of Business Dean Isabelle Bajeux Besnainou also participated, speaking with keynote speaker Abhay Parasnis, Founder and CEO of Typeface.
CMU Startup Week will conclude on Friday with a 99 Tartans investor/founder meet and greet, Student Startup Showcase, a Deep Tech Bootcamp and office hours with Chon Tang, General Partner at SkyDeck.
Read about CMU Startup Week in the Pittsburgh Business Times
Thursday, September 25, 2025
Carnegie Mellon Named a Top 20 U.S. University
Carnegie Mellon University is tied for second nationally in schools with a top 10 rating in at least 28 specialty rankings, according to the 2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, released Tuesday, September 23. Earning a place among the top 20 universities in the United States, Carnegie Mellon ranks No. 1 in seven undergraduate programs—adding analytics and programming languages to last year's top-ranked fields of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, information systems, mobile/web applications and software engineering.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Erosion Prepares to Unveil Feature Film in San Francisco Next Month
Erosion (VentureBridge 2023), an independent film production company dedicated to creating conservation and climate comedy film and TV, is hosting an event for prospective investors in San Francisco on Saturday, October 4th. Attendees will meet Erosion's founders and learn more about Erosion's feature film and web series projects. Erosion is now accepting investments for its first feature film "Hiking Buddies," a horror slasher comedy, on the WeFunder securities platform.
Horror films are traditionally the most profitable film genre and Erosion founders Megan Morrison and Tracy Held are leveraging their 20+ years in the entertainment industry, as well as their expertise of conservation and comedy storytelling to engage untapped film audiences.
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
CMU Alumni Company Signs Deal with Goodyear
Local startup H Quest announced it is collaborating with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. for cleaner tire production. H Quest valorizes natural gas to create hydrogen, which can then be used to heat buildings, a process that it has collaborated on with Peoples Natural Gas. CMU alumnus George Skoptsov is President and CEO.
Friday, September 19, 2025
Agilow Finds New Home at the CMU Swartz Center
Agilow co-founders Shiv Panjwani, 2024-26 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, and Antonio Bojorges, moved into one of the Swartz Center's startup garages this week to continue working on their voice-based management coaching agent that guides you on common entrepreneurial frameworks (EOS, Lean, 0 to 1, Good to Great) and executes for you using Scrum and Kanban.
Shiv is an aerospace engineer, turned Agile coach and entrepreneur, with a deep belief that management is not about control—it's about culture, clarity and continuous improvement. Shiv is also the founder of Panjwani Consulting Group. Antonio is a product innovator and startup builder who thrives at the intersection of Agile structure and creative disruption. He has co-founded startups to leading product operations at Lyft and Syniti.
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Clear Solar Joins Techstars Columbus Accelerator Program
Clear Solar, co-founded by Tepper School of Business alumnus and CEO Michael Provenzano, has been accepted into the Techstars Columbus Accelerator Program, powered by the Ohio State University. Last week marked the official start of Clear Solar's journey in the program, one of the world's leading startup accelerators.
Clear Solar aims to solve one of the solar industry’s biggest challenges—soiling losses on solar panels.
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Three CMU Integrated Innovation Institute Alumni Have Been Rocking the Startup Space
Three CMU Integrated Innovation Institute alumni founders have recently been in the news for their accomplishments with funding, being recognized in Forbes and Vogue Business.
• Sarika Bajaj of Refiberd was recognized as a Tech Innovator in the Vogue Business 100 Innovators Class of 2025 by Vogue Business
• Neha Suresh's startup, April (YC S25), received a mention in Forbes
• Hassan Azmat's startup, Candid Intelligence, completed a $5.5M seed round
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
CMU's Caspian Emerges From Stealth With $5.4M
In international trade, one of the best-kept secrets is also the most expensive: over $10B in refundable tariffs goes unclaimed each year. Despite being legally entitled to recover these funds, companies fail to file duty drawback claims on an estimated 78% to 85% of eligible transactions.
Enter a new wave of AI-powered trade management companies that have collectively raised tens of millions in venture capital over the past eighteen months. The latest of these is San Francisco-based Caspian, which just emerged from stealth with $5.4M in seed funding led by Primary Venture Partners.
Caspian, co-founded by ex-Flexport engineers Justin Sherlock and Matt Ebeweber, is focused specifically on duty drawback—the process of reclaiming tariffs paid on imported goods that are later re-exported.
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
CMU's Zico Kolter Gives Keynote at Recent AI Horizons Summit
The second annual AI Horizons Summit was held at Pittsburgh's Bakery Square last week, which brought together global and local experts on artificial intelligence to discuss the technology that many see as defining Pittsburgh's future. The annual summit is now a two-day affair.
The event's opening keynote was given by CMU's Zico Kolter, board member of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and director of the Machine Learning Department. Kolter's keynote highlighted the rapid advancements of the technology in recent years and its impact on research.
Friday, September 12, 2025
CMU Swartz Center Hits Record Attendance at Annual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Event
The CMU Swartz Center hosted its annual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp event on Friday, September 5, welcoming 700+ students from across CMU's campus to learn about resources and programs offered by the Center and to hear from alumni founders and Pittsburgh partners.
The event kicked off with the Swartz Center's Interim Executive Director Meredith Meyer Grelli, who welcomed the students while highlighting the many programs, funding opportunities and resources available to students interested in entrepreneurship.
This year's fireside chat was given by CMU alumnus Sankalp Arora, founder of Pittsburgh's Gather AI, which was moderated by CMU Computer Science and Business student and Innovation Scholar
Avalon Suiero.
Student and alumni panelists and founders discussed everything from building a successful startup to the various entrepreneurship clubs and programs across campus such as the CMU Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association (UEA), CMU Graduate Entrepreneurship Club (GEC), ScottyLabs, Scottie Ventures, Sigma Eta Pi, CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship and the VentureBridge program.
The Swartz Center would like to thank our CMU/Pittsburgh partner representatives from 99 Tartans, the Center for Technology & Enterprise Creation (CTTEC), the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, IDeATe, CMU Libraries, CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship, CMU's College of Engineering, CMU CyLab, Innovation Works, AlphaLab (AlphaLab Gear, AlphaLab Health), the CMU School of Computer Science JP Morgan Chase & Co. AI Maker Space, LifeX Nucleate, Pittsburgh Robotics Factory and CMU's TechSpark!
This year's event also included classical music organized by CMU's Evelyn Davenport, Rachel Boll and Jacob Cruz and ended with networking at the Project Olympus space in Oakland.
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Candid Intelligence Lands $5.5M Seed Round Led by Quiet Capital
Candid Intelligence co-founder Talha Faiz recently announced that the company has raised a $5.5M Seed round led by Quiet Capital, with support from MIT's E14 Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, Flexcap Ventures, Yann LeCun and others. Candid Intelligence aims to compress months of pre-construction engineering into hours of compute.
Thursday, September 11, 2025
BNY and Carnegie Mellon University Join Forces To Advance Research and Development in AI
BNY, a global financial services company, and Carnegie Mellon University have announced a five-year, $10M agreement to support world-class research and development in artificial intelligence (AI). The collaboration will bring students, faculty and staff from across the University together with BNY experts to advance the state-of-the-art in AI applications and systems and prepare the next generation of leaders.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Astrobotic Inks Potentially Historic Contract with Norwegian Spaceport
One of North Shore-headquartered Astrobotic's vehicles could be the first rocket to launch and land itself in Europe. Astrobotic has inked a partnership with Norwegian company Andøya Space to perform a launch campaign of its terrestrial vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle Xodiac.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
CMU Spinout SeaLion Energy Helping Pittsburgh to Become a Leader in Advanced Clean Energy Manufacturing
CMU spinout SeaLion Energy, is working to solve one of the biggest pain points in electrification: the ability to maximize usable battery capacity without reducing the battery life, allowing safe battery operation under elevated temperatures and operating voltages and charging speeds. In a recent article in Pittsburgh's Tribune Review, the company is highlighted as one of the local innovators paving the way to helping Pittsburgh become a leader in advanced clean energy manufacturing.
Reeja Jayan, CMU Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the founder and CEO.
Friday, September 5, 2025
Joint Ai Secures $315K to Support Growing Demand for Orthopaedic Care
Joint Ai, an AI-powered triage platform designed to help automate the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment for patients suffering from knee and hip arthritis, has announced a $315K investment from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The funds will be used to enhance the company’s technology, increase strategic partnerships, and expand access to orthopaedic surgeons nationwide.
Joint AI is founded by Carnegie Mellon alumnus Dr. Tony DiGioia.
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Pittsburgh Startup Perforated AI Thinks the AI Field is Due for an Update
Perforated AI, co-founded by CMU alumnus, neuroscientist and computer scientist Dr. Rorry Brenner, aims to bridge this difference. Its approach adds structures inspired by dendrites, the branching extensions of neurons, to standard neural networks. The company calls it Perforated Backpropagation, and says the method doesn’t just improve training speed. In tests, it cuts compute costs by as much as 38 times, without hurting accuracy.
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Conduit Raises $375K To Tackle Worker Scheduling Issues
Conduit, a Pittsburgh workforce management startup co-founded by Tepper School of Business alumni Anirudh Kapuria and Max Holmes, has secured $375K in funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to advance its artificial intelligence-powered scheduling platform. The investment brings the company’s total raised capital to $460K from various angel and institutional backers.
The startup addresses significant staffing challenges in service industries, where annual employee turnover can reach 150%.
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