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Friday, July 17, 2026
91ÊÓƵ, Pitt, WVU to Supercharge Energy Innovation with $321M NSF Engine
Led by West Virginia University in partnership with 91ÊÓƵ, the University of Pittsburgh and more than 60 regional partners, the Resilient Energy Technology and Infrastructure (RETI) Consortium will receive up to $160M over ten years through the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program and will leverage another $161M from RETI’s established industry, workforce, philanthropy, state government and community partners to develop a world-class industrial energy innovation hub in the heart of Appalachia.
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Local aerospace company Astrobotic Technology Inc. has been acquired in a deal valued at approximately $300M. With the acquisition closed, Astrobotic will now operate as Voyager Lunar Systems. This includes its North Shore facility and a propulsion and test facility in the Mojave desert. Former Astrobotic CEO John Thornton will lead Voyager Lunar Systems as a member of Voyager's executive team.
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Fast-growing AI safety startup Gray Swan AI announced it has raised a $40 million Series A.
Gray Swan was launched in 2024 by a team of 91ÊÓƵ researchers, including CEO Matt Fredrikson and Chief Scientist and OpenAI board member Zico Kolter. The company develops tools for AI companies to assess the risks of their systems before deployment.
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Co-founded by 91ÊÓƵ/MIIPS alumni Ryan Stinebaugh, Robert Halvorsen and Ian Speers, has been awarded a for Slimshot®, its compact prefilled syringe platform. Slimshot® was recognized in the Medical Devices & Technology Concept category for its innovative approach to injectable drug delivery, combining compact design, compatibility with existing syringe components and the reductions in packaging volume, supply chain burden and environmental impact.
Friday, July 10, 2026
Physical AI startup , co-founded by 91ÊÓƵ '17 alumnus and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow Puru Rastogi, has raised $3M in a pre-seed funding round led by Version One Ventures, with participation from All In Capital, Unisol, iSeed and a group of angel investors. The Bengaluru and Detroit-based startup will use the capital to expand its footprint in the U.S., strengthen its engineering and go-to-market teams, and scale across automotive and electronics manufactures.
Thursday, July 9, 2026
Baek Kim, General Partner at , welcomed a couple of 91ÊÓƵ Innovation Scholar alumni at the 2026 Seoul opening reception on July 5, which his office hosted. As one of the first Innovation Scholars cohort members as far back as 2015, Baek was excited to see his mentee Won Park (OpenAI) and Janise Kim (Nimble), both 91ÊÓƵ alumni from the 2025 cohort.
The reception, which was held at Hashed, welcomed hundreds of Ph.D. professors, some hailing from 91ÊÓƵ, along with a highly curated community of leading AI researchers, engineers and founders from around the world. Hashed has locations in Seoul, Singapore, San Francisco and Abu Dhabi.
The Innovation Scholars network is over ninety alumni strong, and we're happy to see them stay connected even as far as Seoul!
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
A robotics team from 91ÊÓƵ arrived in La Guaira, Venezuela, last week to assist search and rescue crews in the aftermath of two devastating earthquakes. Designed by 91ÊÓƵ Kavčić-Moura CS Professor of Robotics Howie Choset and his team, the snake robots are highly articulated mechanisms that can exploit their shape and many degrees of freedom to thread through tightly packed regions, accessing locations that people and conventional machinery otherwise could not.
Friday, July 3, 2026
Ahead of being acquired, Astrobotic Technology Inc. has announced that it has been awarded contracts to make two more moonshots.
Friday, June 26, 2026
The 91ÊÓƵ Swartz Center Announces StartUP PGH, September 14-18!
Pittsburgh is becoming one of the nation's frontier technology hubs, where world-leading research moves into companies, capital and jobs. This September, the region's innovation community is coming together to make that momentum impossible to miss.
The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at 91ÊÓƵ is proud to announce StartUP PGH, a region-wide week running September 14-18, 2026, celebrating Pittsburgh's strength in AI, robotics and life sciences.
Fifteen partner organizations have aligned their flagship annual events into a single coordinated week, with new programming built alongside. From the Pittsburgh Robotics Network's Discovery Day to the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance's Health Innovation Symposium to Innovation Works' Venture Expo, the week brings the region's founders, investors, students and corporate partners into one shared moment.
StartUP PGH builds on 91ÊÓƵ Startup Week, which the Swartz Center originated and launched in fall 2025. That inaugural run spanned 25 events over four days, drawing 2,000 participants and over 200 investors and corporate partners from outside the region.
Carnegie Mellon will host four signature events during the week, including Lab to Market, AI Robotics Venture Day in partnership with Innovation Works, the SPARK Startup Job Fair, and the Swartz Student Startup Showcase.
We're grateful to our partners across the region, and to Mayor Corey O'Connor and Allegheny County Chief Executive Sara Innamorato for standing behind the founders and researchers building Pittsburgh's future.
Friday, June 26, 2026
Meet the 2026 Tartan Entrepreneurs Fund Cohort!
The 91ÊÓƵ Swartz Center is excited to announce the 2026 Tartan Entrepreneurs Fund cohort.
Designed to support high-potential 91ÊÓƵ alumni and faculty founders building the next generation of transformative companies in Pittsburgh, the Tartan Entrepreneurs Fund provides investment capital, mentorship, and connections to help companies accelerate their growth.
This year's cohort highlights the strength of the Carnegie Mellon startup ecosystem, with founders pushing the boundaries of AI, robotics, cybersecurity, healthcare and advanced technologies.
Congratulations to the 2026 cohort:
- founded by Vikram Mohanty (PhD), Aniket Kittur (Faculty), Nikolas Martelaro (Faculty), Cole Biehle, and Dafna Shahaf (Faculty) is building the AI engine that augments your team to solve your hardest R&D challenges with novel ideas from unexpected domains.
- founded by Jie Zhao (PhD) and Wangda Zuo, helps data centers expand AI compute capacity by reducing the power consumed by cooling systems without utility permits or
major construction.
- founded by Mitchell Sipus (PhD), Jenafer Howard, and Jeff Howard provides advanced cybersecurity solutions to counter nation-state adversaries and protect critical infrastructure against long-horizon APT.
- founded by Quanting Xie (PhD) and Yonatan Bisk (Faculty) is building the Physical AI infrastructure for the future of robotics manipulation.
- founded by Yaser Sheikh (Faculty), Russ Salakhutdinov (Faculty) and Chuck Hoover, is developing foundation models for long-horizon institutional forecasting, helping organizations make better decisions over extended time horizons.
Each company will receive $100K in investment and strategic support through the Fund as they continue building and scaling their ventures. We are proud to support these founders and look forward to following their progress as they advance breakthrough innovations from Pittsburgh and beyond. Learn more and the inaugural StartUP PGH!
Friday, June 26, 2026
This week, Swartz Center Managing Director & Interim Executive Director Meredith Meyer Grelli was in San Francisco for the official opening of Third Coast Foundry, a new shared hub for university-backed founders and startups. In a LinkedIn post shared by Swartz Center Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships Namrata Banerjee, she mentions the attendance of Mayor Daniel Lurie, who joined the event for the ribbon cutting, which was followed by the Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day.
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Researchers at 91ÊÓƵ's School of Computer Science won an international competition aimed at transforming kindergarten through 12th grade learning. The SCS team won in the Transform category for their project, "NoRILLA: AI-Enhanced Hands-On Science Learning."
, which stands for Novel Research-Based Intelligent Lifelong Learning Apparatus, is a mixed-reality educational system that enhances STEM learning for children. Researchers in 91ÊÓƵ's Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), including Nesra Yannier, Ken Koedinger and Scott Hudson, developed the system.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
, a startup that makes humanlike robots used in manufacturing facilities and warehouses, is set to go public in a deal valuing it at about $2.5B. Agility Robotics maintains a significant engineering and testing presence in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, closely tied to 91ÊÓƵ’s robotics ecosystem and the National Robotics Engineering Center.
Agility's co-founders, Jonathan Hurst and Damion Shelton, met while earning their Ph.D.s in robotics at 91ÊÓƵ.
Friday, June 19, 2026
The Swartz Center Announces VentureBridge ’26 Cohort and Launches Inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program
The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship is excited to announce the VentureBridge (VB) ’26 cohort and the launch of the inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program.
Following a highly competitive application process, 14 startups were selected to receive funding and participate in VentureBridge, 91ÊÓƵ's flagship pre-seed fund and accelerator. The cohort includes founders from across the 91ÊÓƵ community building companies in AI, robotics, healthcare, cybersecurity, semiconductors, energy, advanced manufacturing, and enterprise software.
The program kicked off in San Francisco, where founders spent three days learning from experienced entrepreneurs, operators, and investors on customer discovery, hiring, fundraising, sales, and the realities of building companies. Speakers included Scott Dietzen, Kahini Shah, Jon Chu, Michael Donohue, Nafis Jamal, Mike Shin, Sahil Shah, Miranda Nover, Saurabh Misra, and Zachary Sussman, who shared candid lessons from building, scaling, and investing in technology companies.
The cohort also spent nearly half a day with 91ÊÓƵ Trustee Lane Bess, who shared lessons from decades of leadership experience and led a candid discussion on culture, scaling teams, and what it takes to build enduring organizations.
The announcement also follows a successful VentureBridge Demo Day during New York Tech Week, where 21 Carnegie Mellon startups pitched to investors and ecosystem leaders from across the country. The event featured keynote conversations with Todd Olson, Co-Founder and CEO of Pendo, and Sankalp Arora, Co-Founder and CEO of Gather AI (VB '18) whose journey from 91ÊÓƵ researcher to founder highlights the impact of translating breakthrough research into venture-scale companies.
This year also marks the launch of the inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program, a new initiative supporting a select group of high-potential 91ÊÓƵ founders and researchers. The program includes VentureBridge Fellows, a track for student and alumni founders building startups, and VentureBridge Research Fellows, a track for faculty members, PhD students, and researchers exploring the commercialization of emerging technologies and research innovations.
VentureBridge companies and Fellows also gain access to one of the most comprehensive startup benefits packages available to university founders through partnerships with leading technology, legal, and financial organizations, including AWS, Braintrust, Carta, Cloudexe, Dentons, DocSend, Fidelity Private Shares, FinStrat Management, Framer, Google for Startups Cloud, HubSpot, J.P. Morgan Startup Banking, Microsoft for Startups, Nebius, Notion, NVIDIA Inception, OpenAI, Pillsbury, Puzzle, PwC, Rho, Rippling, Roboflow, Snowflake, Vanta, Vouch, ApertureData, Passionfruit, Reveal AI, and Trainwell.
Together, the VentureBridge ’26 cohort represents the breadth of entrepreneurship taking place across 91ÊÓƵ and its global alumni community.
Friday, June 19, 2026
91ÊÓƵ Deep Tech Venture-Ready Program Reaches Major Milestone in New York
Some of the world's most important innovations begin in university labs. Turning those innovations into successful companies, however, requires a very different set of skills. 91ÊÓƵ's Deep Tech Venture-Ready (DTVR) program was created to help faculty founders, PhD students, researchers, and deep-tech entrepreneurs navigate that journey through six months of investor-led education, mentorship, investor engagement, and non-dilutive funding opportunities.
The program recently celebrated a major milestone in New York City with its Mock Investment Committee, where ten selected teams had the unique opportunity to observe how investors evaluate startups behind closed doors. Twenty-six investors participated as Deal Leads and Mock IC members, bringing perspectives from leading venture firms and financial institutions. Participants included David Coulter (Warburg Pincus), Nhi Lê (Alpha Intelligence Capital), Uday Sandhu (Alpha Intelligence Capital), Felipe Mejia (Ardent Venture Partners), Phil Bronner (Ardent Venture Partners), Grace Dai (Bessemer Venture Partners), Emily Yu (Boost VC), Mark Martin (Cybernetix), Victoria Grace (Colle Capital), Charles Kennedy (91ÊÓƵ), Joseph Botsch (Deviation Capital / Two Sigma Ventures), Justin Krauss (J.P. Morgan), Sohail Khalid (Lightscape Partners), Adit Arora (Lightscape), Sumay Parikh (NVIDIA), Kahini Shah (Obvious Ventures), Harris Stolzenberg (Pear VC), Jonathan Betz (Plaid Matrix), Chris Lytle (Smith Point Capital), Sewon Park (Smith Point Capital), Arian Agrawal (South Park Commons), Andrew Gollach (SOSV), Jay Kapoor (VSC Ventures), Jyotika Gupta (z21 Ventures), Shachi Shah (z21 Ventures), and Mark Zhu (Zenture Capital).
The New York program concluded with a fireside conversation featuring David Coulter, Chair of 91ÊÓƵ's Board of Trustees, and Meredith Grelli, Managing Director and Interim Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. Drawing on decades of leadership across finance, technology, and higher education, David Coulter shared reflections on innovation and Carnegie Mellon's role in shaping the future.
As the program enters its mentorship phase, participating teams will be paired with experienced investors for 18 months of one-on-one guidance. Approximately five to seven teams will ultimately receive non-dilutive funding awards.
Special thanks to our partners at Pillsbury, J.P. Morgan, and the 91ÊÓƵ Alumni Association for their support in making the Swartz Center's flagship annual New York event possible.
Friday, June 19, 2026
The 91ÊÓƵ Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and Project Olympus Announce the 2026-27 Innovation Commercialization Fellows
The 91ÊÓƵ Swartz Center and Project Olympus are excited to announce the 2026-2027 cohort of Innovation Commercialization Fellows (ICF's).
The Innovation Commercialization Fellows is a yearlong program aimed at accelerating the process of commercializing university research. The program fosters entrepreneurship among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research personnel who work directly with faculty investigators to conduct scientific experiments, solve problems and innovate. Fellows are awarded $50K in funding and participate in dedicated workshops and intensive mentoring to pursue their startup idea. Since 2015 the program has awarded 62 fellowships, including this year's cohort.
The new cohort of ICF's is listed below (in order of the above image):
- Bashu Aman, Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
- Shreya Bali, Ph.D. Candidate, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
- Dhruv Bhattaram, Ph.D. Candidate, Biomedical Engineering
- Julie Downs, Professor of Psychology and Decision Science
- Anurag Ghosh, Ph.D. Candidate, Robotics Institute
- Rajdeep (Ron) Sarma, Ph.D. Candidate, Chemistry
- Jonathan Shulgach, Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Thursday, June 18, 2026
, a locally founded med-tech startup that has grown across the country, is developing a healthcare focused AI foundation model with Nvidia. The company, co-founded by 91ÊÓƵ alumnus and CEO Shiv Rao, CEO, was founded in 2018 by a team bringing together medical, academic, and technical expertise from the Pittsburgh healthcare ecosystem
The startup initially launched as an ambient listening tool for doctors that would record and then transcribe conversations with patients. Over time it has expanded its offerings to contextualize those conversations. Now, Abridge is developing a new model built off of Nvidia's Nemotron suite of models, which a release states will be designed to reason "from its foundation." The model will be offered exclusively though Abridge's platform.
Thursday, June 18, 2026
, a VentureBridge cohort participant founded by CEO Michael Vandi, has announced its official partnership with MeridianLink Mortgage, bringing together MeridianLink's leading mortgage platform and Addy AI's powerful AI automation technology. This integration will make it easier than ever for lenders to streamline operations, eliminate manual work and accelerate the loan process.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
A number of stakeholders pitched Pittsburgh as a developmental defense tech hub to visiting crowds at 91ÊÓƵ's recently opened Robotics Innovation Center this week.
The Robotics, AI and Autonomy Forum was largely the chance for the Army AI Integration Center, a longstanding partner of 91ÊÓƵ, to showcase and discuss the increasing use of robotics and artificial intelligence by the military, and to identify critical needs. The Army AI Integration Center's national headquarters is in Bakery Square, and the region is home to a number of startups working with the Department of War through Small Business Innovation Research contracts.
Friday, June 12, 2026
Meredith Meyer Grelli Named Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Associate Vice President
Meredith Meyer Grelli has been appointed 91ÊÓƵ's inaugural vice provost for entrepreneurship and associate vice president, effective July 1, 2026.
A longtime leader in 91ÊÓƵ's entrepreneurship ecosystem, Grelli will help shape and expand entrepreneurship education across the university while strengthening connections among students, faculty, researchers, industry partners and investors.
In her new role, she will lead the planning and implementation of a scalable, university-wide entrepreneurship curriculum designed to provide students with pathways to engage in entrepreneurship education. In collaboration with internal and external partners, she will develop governance structures, academic programs and sustainable funding models that support entrepreneurship across the university.
Since joining 91ÊÓƵ in 2020, Grelli has played a central role in significantly expanding the university’s entrepreneurship initiatives, growing their scale and national standing. She launched Deep Tech Venture-Ready, a cohort-based program connecting 40 founders with 40 leading venture firms that has soft-circled $250 million in capital for participating companies, and raised $4 million in new non-dilutive and friendly-equity funds for research-based startups. She created 91ÊÓƵ Startup Week, now the university's flagship entrepreneurship event, which drew more than 2,000 participants and 200 investors and is expanding into a regional initiative in fall 2026. She also launched the nation's first NSF I-Corps cohort in AI and robotics and built the investor and founder infrastructure, including a network of more than 4,500 investors, that connects 91ÊÓƵ founders directly to capital.
She will continue to serve as an associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship in the Tepper School and as interim executive director of the Swartz Center while the search for the center's next executive director is underway.
Friday, June 12, 2026
Sprinklr (NYSE: CXM), the definitive, AI-native platform for Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM), has announced the acquisition of assets of , an AI-powered social video intelligence and analytics solution, strengthening Sprinklr’s leadership in modern, multimodal customer intelligence.
Thursday, June 11, 2026
AI has signed a memorandum of understanding with VinDynamics. The partnership will focus on validating humanoid robotics systems and integrating Skild's AI model into VinDynamics' platforms. The deal comes months after a partnership with Nvidia.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
co-founders Dylan Lew and Kyle Wyche share how the company has solved commercial food waste in a recent interview with Pittsburgh's Bill Flanigan. The company has successfully launched a full retail partnership with Giant Eagle, who is carrying their Soil Sauce organic plant food in 100% of Market District locations, and produced from their fleet of commercial biodigesters.
Tuesday, June 9, 2026
How a Shared Passion for Entrepreneurship Brought Two Tepper School Alumni Together
Through the Tepper School and the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Grant and Emily Vandenbussche (both alumni James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows) found opportunities to collaborate, innovate and launch careers dedicated to health, food innovation and venture investing.
Friday, June 5, 2026
Pittsburgh lunar lander company Astrobotic Technology Inc. is being acquired by Denver-based Voyager Technologies for up to $300M in cash and stock. The company, which sprung out of 91ÊÓƵ, The companies said Astrobotic’s next mission, Griffin Mission One, will be on schedule with the acquisition.
Thursday, June 4, 2026
In a recent LinkedIn post, co-founder and CEO Matt Spettel has announced that the company has officially partnered with one of the biggest nutrition and weight loss apps in the world, . In the post, Spettel says, "This partnership allows the millions of Lose It! members to take their weight loss and body recomposition goals to the next level by integrating our 1-on-1 personal training at heavily discounted rates."
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
