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Friday, October 9, 2026
Tuning the Brain Like a Radio: Synapse Symphony’s Plan to Treat Chronic Pain at Home
A Pittsburgh startup built on years of Carnegie Mellon University research supported by DARPA funding is developing a portable brain-stimulation system to ease chronic pain. During CMU Startup Week, RobotToday spoke with co-founder and chief operating officer Vishal Jain about the technology, early patient results, FDA plans and a second use he described near the end of our talk.
Thursday, October 8, 2026
Gecko Robotics Lands First-Ever Jersey Patch Deal with Duquesne's Men's Basketball Team
Duquesne University's men's basketball team will feature Gecko Robotics as its first-ever jersey sponsor.
The North Shore-headquartered company was founded in 2013 by CEO Jake Loosararian and CMU alumnus and President Troy Demmer, and utilizes a suite of robotics to perform inspections of things that would be difficult or dangerous for a human to complete. Gecko Robotics has been named the Official AI and Robotics Partner of Duquesne University Athletics and will see its logo displayed on jerseys worn by the university's men's basketball team throughout the 2026-27 season.
Friday, October 2, 2026
Carnegie Mellon University Announces Historic $3B Gift from Citadel CEO and Philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin
Carnegie Mellon University and Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin have announced a historic $3B gift to further elevate CMU in Pittsburgh and launch Carnegie Mellon University Miami, a new campus designed to pioneer a model for higher education built for the next era of American innovation.
Additional news: CMU welcomes Citadel CEO, elected officials to campus to celebrate $3B donation
Thursday, October 1, 2026
Efficient Computer Raises $97M Series B, Valuing the Startup at $650M
Efficient Computer Corp. announced it has raised a nearly $100 million Series B fundraising round, valuing the company at $650M.
The startup was founded in 2023 by a group of researchers, professors and alumni from
Carnegie Mellon University. CMU welcomes Citadel CEO, elected officials to campus to celebrate $3B donation
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Newfi And Addy AI Announce Partnership
Newfi and Addy AI, a VentureBridge '23 startup participant founded by CEO Michael Vandi, have announced a collaboration focused on the continued evolution of artificial intelligence in mortgage lending.
Newfi has built innovative lending products and a modern approach to the mortgage market. As the industry evolves, the company continues to explore new technologies that can support its teams and customers. Addy AI builds artificial intelligence specifically for the mortgage industry, working with lenders to bring new AI capabilities into their organizations.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Pittsburgh International Airport Taps Skild AI-powered Robots for Pilot Program
The Pittsburgh International Airport will soon have tech from one of the city's hottest robotics startups roaming around. As part of the airport's xBridge innovation program, four legged robots operating on Skild AI's software will be monitoring the terminal, initially monitoring air quality and eventually checking for spills and overflowing trash bins.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Equishift Joins Health Wildcatters to Advance AI-Powered Hospital Staffing
EquiShift, an AI-powered demand forecasting platform transforming hospital staffing, has been selected to join the 14th cohort of the nationally recognized Health Wildcatters Accelerator at Pegasus Park in Dallas.
Founded by CMU alumna Snehita Sana, EquiShift predicts patient volume and generates shift-specific staffing recommendations to help hospitals better align clinical resources with anticipated needs.
Friday, September 18, 2026
CMU Startup Week Returns Bringing Over Fifteen Regional Partners Together For a Full Week of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Across Pittsburgh
Over 3,000 investors, founders, researchers, students, alumni and corporate and ecosystem partners registered to attend 40+ CMU Startup Week events, which took place September 14-18. Participants gathered on campus for five days of building, pitching and connecting.
This year, CMU Startup Week anchored StartUP PGH, a new city-wide push bringing 15+ regional partners together for a full week of entrepreneurship and innovation across Pittsburgh. The multiday celebration included a lineup highlighting founders from every stage, along with researchers and community partners across the entire CMU ecosystem. Participants witnessed AI and robotics innovations, made research and investor connections and engaged in recruiting opportunities along with a ton of other events across the entire university.
The CMU Startup Week flagship events included: Lab To Market, AI & Robotics Venture Day, CMU SPARK, and the CMU Swartz Startup Showcase (CMU S4).
Friday, September 18, 2026
Two Builders Have Discovered the Potency of Going Analog: Reflections on the Human Power of CMU’s Startup Week
Carnegie Mellon University Startup Week brings thousands of people from the startup, research and investment worlds together to learn and swap ideas. Participants from last year’s inaugural event attest that the gathering across campus provided more than valuable information. It delivers invaluable connections through conversations.
Two founders, Pat O'Donnell, Shelfmark and Pradeep Ravikumar, Wood Wide AI—both with CMU ties— explained how that experience helped grow their businesses.
Friday, September 18, 2026
DashStrom Partners with Chatham to Train Student Coaches
Youth enrichment startup DashStrom, co-founded by CMU alumna Dr. Ketaki Desai and Cristina Ramirez, is set to work with Chatham University to train students, specifically younger ones.
DashStrom has developed a program designed to get kids active in the real world and less engaged with screens. A new partnership with Chatham will see DashStrom provide paid training to upwards of 20 university students as student coaches this fall.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
CMU Undergraduates Balance Learning, Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Through the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, CMU provides tools and mentorship for students pursuing ventures in entrepreneurship and business development, helping to drive economic growth in the region and beyond. While business ideas at Carnegie Mellon often form after years of research by accomplished faculty and alumni, undergraduates also strive to turn their ideas into reality, learning to pitch and execute their ideas to the market while earning degrees.
Students from across CMU’s seven schools and colleges can bring their ideas to the Swartz Center to potentially make them a reality.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Astrobotic Co-Founder Kicks Off Innovation Works Venture Expo with Keynote
Innovation Works kicked off its annual Venture Expo in Oakland with an emphasis on space.
The event, which this year is part of the broader StartUP PGH week, brings together investors and startup founders for a day of pitches, networking and meetings. Leading a keynote session was John Thornton, co-founder of aerospace firm Astrobotic Technology Inc., which was recently acquired by Voyager Technologies for $300M.
Friday, September 11, 2026
Rare Ventures Rings NYSE Opening Less than a Month After Launch
Less than a month after being unveiled, Rare Ventures rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
The philanthropic venture-focused nonprofit was announced in August, with a $25M backing from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and support from Pearl Jam musician Eddie Vedder, along with his wife Jill Vedder. The Pittsburgh-based effort aims to transform the way rare disease treatments get developed and funded by building out an infrastructure platform of patient data and support development efforts, including research, regulatory strategy and commercialization.
The organization brings together a number of local stakeholders, including the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the UPMC Vision Institute.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
CMU Spinout CorePower Reports $14.3M in Fresh Funding
CorePower Magnetics raised $14.3M as it works to scale its electric vehicle and power grid tech.
The round remains open as the company seeks an additional $220K to meet its $14.5M goal, according to a new Form D filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Friday, September 4, 2026
CMU Founder Breaks Down the OpenAI Agent Incident for Bank Security Teams
CollAI, an AI trust and control startup founded by CMU MS ECE student Siddhartha Vanjari (VentureBridge '26), has published a breakdown of the OpenAI research-agent incident in which agents repurposed an internal package manager as an unapproved message board, encoded messages in directory names to rebuild it after the first was cleared, and later reached Hugging Face production systems. His takeaway for regulated teams: an input filter can approve a safe-looking request, but it cannot govern what the model emits next or what the agent then tries to do with it.
CollAI builds the control layer after that filter, where model outputs are scanned for covert exfiltration, a named human approves destructive actions from mobile, and every step is written to a hash-chained audit trail. The product is live at dashboard.trycollai.com, and CollAI is opening design-partner seats for regulated financial services teams.
Siddhartha's advisor is Bhiksha Raj, CMU LTI department, School of Computer Science.
Friday, September 4, 2026
ARM Institute Announces Nearly $90M in DoW Funding for Robotics Projects
The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute (ARM), based in Pittsburgh, announced that it has been awarded upwards of $90M for ten different projects, aiming to better implement automation, robotics and AI into 12 different military manufacturing sites across the country.
The ARM Institute is the Department of War's lead Manufacturing Innovation Institute, an organization focused on boosting domestic manufacturing through advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics with hundreds of member organizations.
"This funding award recognizes not only the leadership role the ARM Institute plays in modernizing manufacturing, but the key role our member consortium plays in these efforts," former re2 President & CEO and ARM Institute CEO Jorgen Pedersen said in a prepared statement."
Read more at the Pittsburgh Business Times.
Friday, August 28, 2026
Self-Driving Truck Startup Gatik Raises $200M Following PepsiCo Deal
Gatik, the autonomous vehicle startup known for its self-driving box trucks, has raised $200M just two months after striking a multiyear commercial agreement with PepsiCo. The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, and Intact Private Capital.
Carnegie Mellon MS, Robotics alumnus Gautam Narang is Gatik's CEO and Co-Founder.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
CMU Founded Efficient Computer Raises $93M
Local computer chip manufacturer Efficient Computer has raised $93M, according to a Form D filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Founded in 2022 by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, the company has almost 50 employees and an estimated valuation of more than $300M, according to PitchBook.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow and Tepper School of Business MBA Rachel Hagani Featured in Poets&Quants
Rachel Hagani, Tepper School of Business MBA and 2025-27 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow is featured in Poets&Quants' "Meet the FT MBA Class of 2027".
As a CMU engineering alumna returning to CMU, Rachel spent her career at Medtronic developing medical devices, including supporting the first-in-human clinical trial for a Class III implantable device. She's bridging engineering and business, while embracing Tepper's tech-focused, data-driven curriculum, and her goals for building med tech solutions with real patient impact.
Friday, August 21, 2026
Gray Swan AI Moves to Larger Bakery Square Office
Gray Swan AI, the artificial intelligence safety startup founded by CMU researchers, has quadrupled its Pittsburgh footprint securing space in Bakery Square. The startup raised a $40M Series A round earlier this year and had previously been based in a 4,200-square-foot space in Shadyside.
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Hermes Vision Featured in Pittsburgh Startup News
Hermes Vision, an autonomous agriculture technology company founded by CMU Mechanical Engineering student and CEO Grant Wilkinson, addresses the critical gap in vegetation management for pasture and rangeland. Grant was recently featured in a video released by Pittsburgh Startup News, where he explains the technology behind Hermes Vision and how the company's autonomous drones map landscapes and plan optimized flight paths alllowing for treatment with surgical precision.
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Tepper School of Business MBA Alexander DesPois Featured in Poets & Quants' Class of 2027
Tepper School MBA and 2025-27 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow Alexander DesPois was featured in Poets & Quants last month. Described as an "Empathetic, resilient servant-leader, Army veteran, husband, passionate about exploring cultures and global perspectives", Alexander is also a dedicated, hard working entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of DesPois, a company focused on helping artists transform an album's sonic mytholoy into an immersive experience.
Friday, August 14, 2026
Carnegie Mellon Names Damion Shelton Associate Vice President and Executive Director of the Swartz Center
Carnegie Mellon University has named Damion Shelton (SCS 2004, 2007) as Associate Vice President and the next Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, appointing an experienced entrepreneur, technology executive and Carnegie Mellon alumnus to lead the university's next phase of growth in entrepreneurship, enterprise creation and research commercialization.
Damion will officially start on Monday, August 17.
Shelton's appointment reflects the University's commitment to placing experienced entrepreneurs at the center of its innovation ecosystem. Throughout his career, he has worked at the intersection of research, entrepreneurship and commercialization, bringing firsthand knowledge of the challenges founders face as they transform breakthrough technologies into sustainable companies. Those experiences closely align with the Swartz Center's mission to help Carnegie Mellon innovators navigate the journey from laboratory discovery to marketplace impact. His appointment also marks a continued commitment to Pittsburgh, where he maintains strong connections to the region’s technology and robotics community.
Previously, Shelton helped to found one of the nation’s leading Physical AI deep-technology startups. As co-founder of Agility Robotics, he led the company from an emerging robotics startup to one of the world's leading developers of humanoid robots.
Friday, August 14, 2026
Rare Ventures, a First-of-its-kind Platform for Accelerating Rare Disease Therapies, Launches in Pittsburgh
Carnegie Mellon University is a founding partner in a Pittsburgh-based partnership that brings together leaders in medicine, biotechnology and artificial intelligence to speed the development of treatments
for rare diseases.
The Richard King Mellon Foundation has committed up to $25 million to launch Rare Ventures™, a first-of-its-kind venture philanthropy platform designed to accelerate the development of therapies for rare diseases and to create a new model for medical innovation.
Friday, August 14, 2026
Skylight Health, a VC-backed Multi-specialty Care Coordination Platform, Acquires YC-backed Saffron Health
Skylight Health, a mission-driven healthcare company committed to Making Specialty Care Better for All, announced it has acquired certain intellectual property assets of Saffron Health, a referral automation company. Saffron Health co-founders are Carnegie Mellon alumni Michael Kronovet and Tanishq Kancharla.
Saffron is now focusing on building open source software to help companies automate legacy portals: both in browser and on-prem. Learn more about their open source work and reach out to michael@libretto.sh for more information.
Thursday, August 13, 2026
CMU Startup, Fort Featured in New York Post
In a recent New York Post publication, CMU startup Fort (VentureBridge '25), is listed among seven other jewelry-inspired devices that prove that the future of health tracking can be just as stylish as it is smart. Founded by Miranda Nover, Fort is part of a new generation of smarter, sleeker wearables that don’t force customers to choose between style and stats.
Friday, August 7, 2026
Shelfmark Raises $3.5M to Scale Physical AI and Hire in Pittsburgh
Uptown-based physical AI company Shelfmark raised a $3.5 million seed round, with plans to scale local hiring. Armory Square Ventures, based in New York, alongside Grand Ventures, Hyde Park Angels, Argon Ventures and Cultivation Capital led the recent round.
Friday, August 7, 2026
HeadStrait Labs Secures $350K Investment from Richard King Mellon Foundation
HeadStrait Labs, a medical technology company redefining emergency transportation for traumatic brain, head, neck and spine injuries, announced a $350,000 lead investment from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The investment will support manufacturing readiness, continued product development and regional partnerships in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties with EMS agencies, hospitals, rural health providers, athletics programs and senior living communities.
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
