Â鶹´å

Friday, September 18, 2026

Two Builders Have Discovered the Potency of Going Analog: Reflections on the Human Power of Â鶹´å’s Startup Week

Â鶹´å 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 Â鶹´å ties— explained how that experience helped grow their businesses.

Read more at Â鶹´å.

Friday, September 18, 2026

Youth enrichment startup , co-founded by Â鶹´å 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

Â鶹´å Undergraduates Balance Learning, Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Through the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Â鶹´å 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 Â鶹´å’s seven schools and colleges can bring their ideas to the Swartz Center to potentially make them a reality.

Read more at Â鶹´å.

Thursday, September 17, 2026

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

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, Â鶹´å, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the UPMC Vision Institute. 

Thursday, September 10, 2026

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

Â鶹´å Founder Breaks Down the OpenAI Agent Incident for Bank Security Teams

, an AI trust and control startup founded by Â鶹´å 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 , and CollAI is opening design-partner seats for regulated financial services teams.

Siddhartha's advisor is , Â鶹´å LTI department, School of Computer Science.

Friday, September 4, 2026

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."

Friday, August 28, 2026

, 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

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 Â鶹´å researchers, the company has almost 50 employees and an estimated valuation of more than $300M, according to PitchBook.

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

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 Â鶹´å engineering alumna returning to Â鶹´å, 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, the artificial intelligence safety startup founded by Â鶹´å 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

, an autonomous agriculture technology company founded by Â鶹´å 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 MBA and 2025-27 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow 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

Rare Ventures, a First-of-its-kind Platform for Accelerating Rare Disease Therapies, Launches in Pittsburgh

Â鶹´å 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.

Read more on Carnegie Mellon News.

Friday, August 14, 2026

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 and reach out to michael@libretto.sh for more information.

Thursday, August 13, 2026

In a recent New York Post publication, Â鶹´å startup (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

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, 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. 

Friday, July 31, 2026

, recently featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and co-founded by Tepper School of Business alumnus and CEO Robert Miller, is a New York based health AI company aimed at helping patients sustain the results of metabolic care, especially as GLP-1 prescribing grows across cardiology, endocrinology and pain medicine. The platform is live in settings ranging from a 300-bed hospital network to more than a dozen independent specialty practices. It is also supporting the development of the very first official Nutrition Guidelines for the American Society of Pain and Neuroscience, positioning them as leaders in the next wave of nutrition-embedded services in the evolving healthcare system.

Friday, July 31, 2026

East Liberty development Bakery Square has emerged as a hub for tech startups and is set to add two new tenants. One of those startups is Mine Vision Systems, a local startup that maps and analyzes underground mines, , which has taken up 6,200 square feet of office space. The company closed a $12.5 million Series A late last year, led by local firm Rockwell Venture Capital. The startup was founded in 2015, spinning out of Â鶹´å and its National Robotics Engineering Center.

Friday, July 24, 2026

, a VentureBridge '21 participant and AI-powered creative analytics platform led by CEO Akaash Ramakrishnan and CTO Shreyas Venugopalan, has been acquired by Brunner, a Pittsburgh-based independent advertising agency. Shreyas is a Â鶹´å alumnus and helped build the platform’s core AI and computer vision capabilities. AdSkate helps brands and agencies understand which creative elements drive campaign performance and supports smarter decision-making across creative, media, and campaign strategy.

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Gecko Robotics has announced plans to open a new 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Sewickley, PA expanding its presence in the region beyond its Nova Place headquarters. The robotics unicorn utilizes a suite of robotics to perform inspections of things that would be difficult or dangerous for a human to complete.

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Â鶹´å Startups Bring Energy Innovation to Market

Startups launched out of Â鶹´å are stabilizing the power grid, bringing climate tech solutions to market and preventing household utility service shutoffs before they happen.

“At Carnegie Mellon, we do not leave the implementation to others. We spin off companies that can move research forward in ways that directly benefit society,” said Larry Pileggi, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-founder of Â鶹´å startup .

Read more on Carnegie Mellon.

Friday, July 17, 2026

Â鶹´å, Pitt, WVU to Supercharge Energy Innovation with $321M NSF Engine

Led by West Virginia University in partnership with Â鶹´å, 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.

Read more on Carnegie Mellon News.

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 Â鶹´å 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 Â鶹´å/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 Â鶹´å '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 Â鶹´å 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 Â鶹´å alumni from the 2025 cohort.

The reception, which was held at Hashed, welcomed hundreds of Ph.D. professors, some hailing from Â鶹´å, 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 Â鶹´å arrived in La Guaira, Venezuela, last week to assist search and rescue crews in the aftermath of two devastating earthquakes. Designed by Â鶹´å 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.