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Friday, August 30, 2024
TalkMeUp Founder JJ Xu Becomes an Adjunct Professor at the Tepper School of Business
JJ Xu, CEO of TalkMeUp, is now serving as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. At the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, she teaches practical strategies for launching and scaling startup ventures, offering students real-world insights into innovation and leadership in the startup world.
JJ will also start a new position as Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the Corporate Startup Lab.
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Retired Duolingo Head of Finance Denis Meinert Dies at 64
The CMU Swartz Center is sad to announce the passing of its good friend, Denis Meinert, who passed away peacefully at his home, in O'Hara Township, Pittsburgh, PA, surrounded by his loving family on August 26, 2024 at the age of 64.
Denis had over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and financial executive. He was the retired Head of Finance for Duolingo, and served as CFO of 4moms from 2011 to 2013. He was also CFO and a Principal for H.B. Maynard and Company (acquired by Accenture in 2007), and as CFO for Hire for companies including CMU spin-offs reCAPTCHA (acquired by Google in 2009) and Blue Belt Technologies (acquired by HealthPointCapital in 2011). Denis loved life with a passion that inspired and enriched the lives of everyone around him.
Read the obituary for Denis.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Carnegie Mellon Core Partner in New Center To Improve Robot Dexterity
Carnegie Mellon University will be a core partner in a new multi-institutional collaboration that has received $26M from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch an Engineering Research Center (ERC) dedicated to revolutionizing the ability of robots to amplify human labor. The new ERC will be run by Carmel Majidi, faculty co-founder of Arieca and Estat, Swartz Center supported startups.
Read more at Carnegie Mellon News.
Friday, August 23, 2024
Meredith Meyer Grelli Appointed New Director of Project Olympus
Meredith Meyer Grelli has taught over a thousand students about entrepreneurship since joining Carnegie Mellon University full-time as an assistant teaching professor of entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. She is dedicated to helping people navigate business development, no matter the stage.
She will now take on a new role, succeeding Kit Needham as Assistant Dean for Entrepreneurship Initiatives and Director of Project Olympus. In her words, "It's an honor to carry forth Kit's work and Lenore Blum's vision for supporting entrepreneurial efforts of our faculty, students, staff and community members".
Meredith will continue her faculty role at the Tepper School of Business, and her EIR role at the CMU Swartz Center, embracing CMU’s interdisciplinary spirit.
Congratulations Meredith, from all of us at the CMU Swartz Center!
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Sitewiz Accepted into Alpha Lab's Newest Cohort
Sitewiz, co-founded by Ram Potham, an Innovation Scholar with the CMU Swartz Center, Rohit Malhotra and Drake Som, is an end-to-end digital optimization solution offering AI-driven actionable suggestions and personalizations to boost conversion rates and average order values. The company has been accepted into Alpha Lab's newest cohort, as mentioned in their recent blog.
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Pumbhirri Studios Founder Isha Hans Launches Kickstarter: 3-in-1 Artwork - Play and Display
Isha Hans, CMU Master of Design alumna and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, has brought together her love for experience design, art and entrepreneurship with her company Pumbhirri, and has launched a special product on Kickstarter.
Isha realized that art prints often end up as passive decorations, lacking a personal connection with their owners. As an artist herself, she wanted to change that and has created an interactive experience: you piece together three artworks as a puzzle, then frame them to create art that feels personal and meaningful. Isha is eager to share her play and display experience with the world, and her goal with the Kickstarter campaign is to raise capital for production costs. Visit the Kickstarter to support Isha as she embarks on her fundraising goals!
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Transfr Launches Career Exploration 2.0 to Guide Students from the Classroom to to In-Demand-Jobs
Career Exploration 2.0 by Transfr provides immersive learning opportunities to guide learners from the classroom to meaningful careers. Founded by CEO Bharani Rajakumar, Transfr empowers learners through a comprehensive career development platform to navigate new career paths, enhance job satisfaction, and adapt to the evolving job market. The company was recently named the 2024 "Best World-Changing Idea, North America" by Fast Company.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Brew Gentlemen to Open Braddock Public House In Former Superior Motors Space
After running pop-ups out of the space on occasion throughout the past year, Brew Gentlemen, co-founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumni Matthew Katase and Asa Foster, is set to open the Braddock Public House by the end of the summer. Located at the former Superior Motors restaurant, the brewpub will feature beers from Brew Gentlemen and other local craft producers.
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
RK Mellon Foundation Awards $1.4M to Pitch Competition Winners, Including CMU Startups
The Richard King Mellon Foundation has announced the winners of its third Social-Impact Pitch Competition. Four young Pittsburgh-area companies received a combined $1.4M from the region's largest foundation, three that have founders tied to Carnegie Mellon University including: People's Energy Analytics (1st place, $500K); Marinus Analytics (2nd place, $400K) and Troutwood, Inc. (3rd place, $300K).
Friday, August 16, 2024
Velo.AI To Equip POGOH Bikes With Sensors as Part of $15M DOT Grant Program To Improve Road Safety
Velo.AI, a participant in the 2023 VentureBridge cohort, has been awarded $200K from the Department of Transportation to help improve safety conditions for cyclists.
The company will utilize the funding to use a fleet of bicycle-mounted sensors to gather and compute real-time, near-miss collision data between bicycles and automobiles to analyze and identify road safety hazards and risks in the Pittsburgh region.
Thursday, August 15, 2024
How Duolingo Turned a Free Language App Into a $7.7B Business
Language-learning app Duolingo makes around $500M annually, despite offering all of its lessons for free. The WSJ explores how the company is using AI and A/B testing to keep users hooked.
Thursday, August 15, 2024
The Customer Discovery Kickstart Program Wraps UpTwelfth Cohort
The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship’s Project Olympus Incubator recently completed its 12th cohort of the Customer Discovery Kickstart, a program for early-stage startups to explore the feasibility of their business ideas. Read more about the participating startups here.
12 startups learned about the fundamentals of customer discovery during the 4-week course, which included conducting customer discovery interviews and coaching from experienced Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. Participants included undergraduate and graduate students, and alumni from several CMU schools and departments including Dietrich College, School of Computer Science, College of Engineering, Tepper School of Business, and Integrated Innovation Institute.
Two Kickstart cohorts will be offered in the Fall—the four-week, remote programs will begin on September 18 and October 23. Contact Melanie Simko, Program Manager for more information.
Friday, August 9, 2024
BlastPoint Featured in Next Pittsburgh's Article: Pittsburgh's Tech Industry Booms Fueled By Startups and Investments
Pittsburgh’s tech ecosystem is still growing. Last year, sixty local startups saw a $7.38M investment and 1,154 new jobs with support from Innovation Works. Several Innovation Works’ portfolio companies saw huge growth in the past year, including Carnegie Mellon University startup BlastPoint, which raised $8.91M last year.
Co-founded by Alison Alvarez and Tomer Borenstein, BlastPoint is an East Liberty-based startup that uses AI to predict human behavior for large enterprises to understand their customers better. Last year, BlastPoint grew from twelve employees to over forty.
Thursday, August 8, 2024
Aurora Raises $483M to Support Scaling Strategy and Upcoming Launch of Driverless Trucks in Texas
Last week we raised total gross proceeds of $483 million, which adds to our $1 billion of liquidity as of the end of June. With runway well into 2026, we expect this incremental capital to fund the initial phase of our scaling strategy. I feel energized by this momentum as we prepare to launch driverless trucks in Texas, planned for the end of this year.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Swartz Center Hosts CMU Rales Fellowship Orientation
On Monday, August 5, approximately twenty two Carnegie Mellon graduate students from various schools on campus attended the first CMU Rales Fellows Program orientation, which was held at the CMU Swartz Center. Led by Amy Burkert, Ph.D., CMU Vice Provost for Education, this program attracts and equips a diverse group of future leaders in STEM to empower them and connect them with others who share their passion and to advance the next generation of diverse STEM leaders.
Students from the College of Engineering, Dietrich College, Mellon College of Science, School of Computer Science and Inter-College Programs are eligible to participate.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
AI Horizons Summit Represents Return to Forward-thinking Pittsburgh
A recently announced artificial intelligence summit, fittingly called AI Horizons, will take place in Pittsburgh in October. The summit represents the needed return of global ambition to Pittsburgh, as the city quietly remains a leading center for research and innovation. The event’s partners include both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, along with Google, Duolingo and local AI firms.
Friday, August 2, 2024
Pearl Raises $58M to Help Dentists Make Better Diagnoses Using AI
Pearl, one of only three startups that has an FDA clearance to use AI to assist dentists make accurate diagnoses and provide patients with a “second opinion,” announced last week that it raised a $58M Series B round led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Smash Capital, Alpha Partners, and existing investors, Craft Ventures and Neotribe Ventures.
Pearl is founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumnus and CEO Ophir Tanz, who incubated Pearl inside GumGum, a computer vision startup serving sports and advertising franchises, which he co-founded in 2007.
Thursday, August 1, 2024
Carnegie Mellon Startups Among Semi-Finalists for UpPrize
Five Carnegie Mellon University startups have been named semi-finalists in the 2024 UpPrize Social Innovation Challenge, aimed at creating cross-sector partnerships to solve some of our community’s most pressing problems. The startups, who have been participants in several Swartz Center programs such as the James R. Swartz Fellows, VentureBridge and the Customer Discovery Kickstart program are: Velo AI, Galen Health, Kloopify, Fine Art Miracles and Peoples Energy Analytics.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
VentureBridge Startup Fluid Reality Honored with Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award
Fluid Reality, a spinout from technology developed at the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University co-founded by Carnegie Mellon alumnus Craig Shultz and Joe Mullenbach, is an honoree of Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award. The 2023 VentureBridge company makes compact actuator components for consumer and enterprise electronic devices.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Multi-hyphenate Creator and Technologist Damola Idowu Is Using Hip-Hop To Introduce Pittsburgh Students To Technology, Science, Math and Entrepreneurship
Damola Idowu began his relationship with hip-hop in the late 1980's. Along the way, he also envisioned an academic path after listening to various famous rappers at the time. His son Wole Idowu, also revealing engineering talent at an early age, earned meetings in Silicon Valley and recruitment by top colleges, eventually landing at Carnegie Mellon University.
The two developed a curriculum called ToyzSTEAM, working with a Carnegie Mellon start-up program to co-found Toyz Electronics, Inc., which is working out of the CMU Swartz Center.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
The CMU Swartz Center Announces 2024-25 Innovation Commercialization Fellows
The Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship recently awarded five Innovation Commercialization Fellowships for 2024-2025. Find out more about the new cohort here (pdf).
Friday, July 26, 2024
Cold Shipping Might be the Next Industry that Batteries Disrupt
Hannah Sieber, co-founder of 2022 VentureBridge company, Artyc, had noticed that utilities were spending more on generators and microgrids in wealthier communities, leaving smaller, poorer communities in the lurch. She started digging deeper into refrigeration, probing for places where battery-powered cooling might make a difference, and quickly zeroed in on shipping after reading up on its climate impacts. Artyc is her answer to that question. The company has quietly raised $14M to date, and it has a product on the market, Medstow Micro, that helps hospitals, clinical trials and medical laboratories ship temperature-sensitive specimens.
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Galen Health Is a 2024 UpPrize Semi-Finalist
Founded by CMU Master of Science student Logan Nye, MD, a 2023-25 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, Galen Health is a semi-finalist in the 2024 UpPrize Social Innovation Challenge. The company harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to pioneer breakthroughs in the early detection and prevention of pancreatic cancer.
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
The Endgame Entrepreneurship™ Masterclass launched by Laurie Barkman, The Business Transition Sherpa
We are excited to share that Laurie Barkman, CMU Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and CEO of The Business Transition Sherpa, has just launched a new Endgame Entrepreneurship Masterclass. This online course is for business owners, entrepreneurs, and family business leaders in the lower middle market who want to increase enterprise value and sell on their terms in the future.
Friday, July 19, 2024
4moms Acquired by Global Baby Product Producer
UPPAbaby, a global baby products company, has closed on an asset purchase agreement with the parent company of 4moms, a local robotics company specializing in products for infants.
4moms was founded in 2005 by Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Henry Thorne and Robert Daley. The company's initial product was a folding stroller. It then received larger recognition for a robotic baby rocker, which has sold millions of units. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Thursday, July 18, 2024
NAVAIR Selects Near Earth Autonomy for USMC Aerial Logistics Connector Program
Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has selected Near Earth Autonomy, co-founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumnus and CEO Sanjiv Singh, to spearhead one of the teams for the United States Marine Corps’ Aerial Logistics Connector program.
Friday, July 12, 2024
TalkMeUp Wins Top 20 In AI Training Award
Training Industry has announced its selections for the 2024 Top Training Companies™ lists for the AI in Training sector of the corporate learning and development (L&D) market. Among the winners is TalkMeUp, founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumna and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow JJ Xu.
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Skild AI Closes $300M Series A Round Backed In Part By Jeff Bezos
Pittsburgh-based robotics company Skild AI Inc., a company "building a scalable foundation model for robotics," announced the closing of a $300M series A funding round, one of the most sizable publicly disclosed investments the Pittsburgh tech sector has received this fiscal year.
CEO Deepak Pathak co-founded the company with Abhinav Gupta, who, together, have worked a combined 25 years at Carnegie Mellon University with robotics and AI.
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Gather AI Holds Annual Staff Gathering at the Swartz Center
Gather AI, co-founded by Carnegie Mellon alumnus Sankalp Arora, brought all of its teams together for their 2024 Great Gathering. The US-based team convened in Pittsburgh at the CMU Swartz Center on July 1-3, 2024 and the India team traveled to Udaipur for three days of team-bonding, strategy and fun.
The maker of computer vision and AI-powered warehouse inventory monitoring solutions recently announced a $17M Series A-1, which marks a total of $34M raised to date. The funding will be invested in scaling operations as Gather AI continues to attract customers by solving supply chain issues with richer data and AI.
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
CMU, Meta Announce Collaboration to Research Wearable Sensing Technologies
Carnegie Mellon University and Meta Platforms Inc. announced a collaborative project today to make computer-based tasks accessible to individuals with different motor abilities.
Friday, June 28, 2024
EY Announces Bharani Rajakumar of Transfr as an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2024 New York Award Winner
Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) has announced that CMU Tepper School of Business alumnus Bharani Rajakumar, founder and CEO of Transfr, was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2024 New York Award winner. Entrepreneur Of The Year is the preeminent competitive awards program for entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies.
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Mehmet Deniz Birlikci Named One of the Top 25 Turkish Graduates in the US for 2024
Mehmet Deniz Birlikci, a recent Carnegie Mellon University graduate and Innovation Scholar with the CMU Swartz Center, was recently named one of the top 25 Turkish graduates in the U.S. in 2024.
Deniz has always had a passion for learning, nurtured by his grandparents who were all teachers. He spent his final year at CMU combining his passion for entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence to co-found ObviousAI, which developed multimodal search for fashion e-commerce companies, and was also selected as a Neo Scholar in 2024 for his high entrepreneurship potential and technical excellence, becoming one of only a handful of Turkish students to ever receive this honor.
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
CyLab Venture Network Connects Researchers, Domain Experts to Support Cybersecurity Startups
Carnegie Mellon University is launching the CyLab Venture Network to provide a substantive program for startups looking to disrupt the security and privacy industry by connecting founders with venture investors, corporate partners, academics and government officials. As part of this dynamic ecosystem, partners will receive exclusive invitations to participate in CyLab’s annual partners conference and engage in innovative programming developed in collaboration with CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Aurora Forms Long-Term Partnership with Uber Freight Through 2030
Self-driving truck company Aurora Innovation Inc. has solidified a long-term partnership with Uber Freight through 2030. Aurora Innovation was started by Sterling Anderson, the former director of Autopilot; Chris Urmson, the former CTO of Google’s self-driving car efforts and Drew Bagnell, who headed autonomy and perception at Uber’s Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh. Urmson and Bagnell pioneered work on autonomous vehicles at Carnegie Mellon University.
Friday, June 21, 2024
Abridge Continues Expanding, Partners with Texas-based Health Service Provider
Abridge recently announced an enterprise-wide agreement with CHRISTUS Health, an international, not-for-profit health system based in Texas with 15,000 physicians and more than 600 care centers. With Abridge’s generative AI solution for clinical documentation in use over the last few months, CHRISTUS clinicians have already experienced a significant reduction in burnout and now give more undivided attention to patients. Abridge is co-founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Shiv Rao, CEO and Zachary Lipton, CTO and Raj Reddy Associate Professor of Machine Learning.
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Duolingo Celebrates First Refugee Learners At 'We Rise Together' Gala
Duolingo, known for its fun approach to language education, recently celebrated a more profound kind of education: one offered for the first time to refugees around the world. Dozens of university leaders from across the U.S. recently gathered at Hotel Monaco in Pittsburgh to honor educators who are expanding access and equity. The fourth annual “We Rise Together” awards celebrated 25 refugee students who recently completed their first year in universities, thanks to a program Duolingo launched in 2022 to provide mentorship and support.
Friday, June 14, 2024
CMU VentureBridge (VB) Announces Investments in Eleven Startups
As part of the VB '24 funding cycle, CMU VB, an initiative of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, is excited to invest in eleven-CMU-alumni-founded startups located in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and New York. These alumni founders represent the School of Computer Science, Robotics Institute, College of Engineering Material Sciences, Information Networking Institute, Integrated Innovation Institute, College of Fine Arts School of Design Industrial Design and the Tepper School of Business.
Congratulations Founders!
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Gather AI CEO Sankalp Arora Interviewed on Bloomberg Discussing How The Company is Taking Drone Tech to New Heights
Gather AI CEO Sankalp Arora was recently interviewed on Bloomberg discussing multiple topics including: how, with e-commerce, inventory has to be accurate to ensure that goods arrive on time, how robotics now enables you to use off-the-shelf hardware and make that hardware autonomous, how Gather AI customers have a 66% reduction in inventory errors with their solution being 15X faster than manual inventory counting and how Gather has turned facilities from reactive to proactive.
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
TA3 SWIM Partners With Nimble to Scale Operations
TA3 SWIM announced last week its partnership to leverage Nimble's fully autonomous 3PL fulfillment. The e-commerce fashion brand can now access Nimble’s network of next-gen robotic fulfillment centers that use intelligent general-purpose warehouse robots to pick, pack and ship orders without any CapEx investment. TA3 was featured on Shark Tank and in People, Forbes, and Business Insider, TA3 is the leader in women’s swimwear and apparel with built-in shapewear.
Nimble is founded by Simon Kalouche, who is also a 2015 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Artyc Named Technology Pioneer by The World Economic Forum
Artyc, the company that designs and manufacturers IoT battery-powered coolers for healthcare, life sciences and premium food cold chains, has recently been named Technology Pioneer by The World Economic Forum. A 2022 VentureBridge company, Artyc is co-founded by Hannah Sieber, CEO. Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Mark Langer is CTO.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Interpretable AI: A Night of Discovery at PyData Pittsburgh
This past Tuesday, over 60 data scientists, ML engineers and Python enthusiasts from across the region gathered at CMU's Swartz Center for an evening dedicated to unraveling the complexities of neural networks and their interpretability. Patrick Harrison and Dr. Rory Brenner led the discussions, providing unique insights into the current and future state of AI.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Carnegie Mellon University Startups Among Ten Pittsburgh Startups to Watch in 2024
When the Pittsburgh Business Times selected this year’s list of ten Startups to Watch in 2024, it consulted with industry experts and looked at a variety of factors including size, scalability, investments, team background and, most importantly, one basic question — how is the company pushing us toward the future? On the list are startups founded by Carnegie Mellon University alumni including: D. Sole, Edulis Therapeutics, Core Power Magnetics, Efficient Computer Corp and Stack AV.
All ten companies will be recognized at a Startups to Watch 2024 event on Thursday, June 27 at Workscape on the South Side.
Friday, June 7, 2024
The CMU Swartz Center Hosts 'Swartz in the City Series' at the Allegheny HYP Club in Downtown Pittsburgh
As part of a continuing series, the Carnegie Mellon Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship has hosted 'Swartz in the City Series' events at the Allegheny HYP (AHYP) Club in Pittsburgh's downtown. Co-hosted and moderated by Executive Director Dave Mawhinney, approximately seven events have been held since November of 2022 with audience attendance between fifty and sixty persons.
Last Thursday, the Swartz Center held another event at the AHYP, inviting three winners of the 2024 McGinnis Venture Competition to present their startups. The presenting founders were: Ram Potham, SiteWiz (with Drake Som and Rohit Malhotra); Logan Nye, MD, Galen Health (with Kushagra Agarwal); and Howie Choset, Kavčić-Moura Computer Science Professor of Robotics, JP Robotics (with Tina Tian, Lu Li and Mike Macedonia). The event was moderated by Meredith Grelli, Tepper School of Business Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Swartz Center EIR.
Organized by Donald Bonk, Heinz MPM CMU alumnus and long serving President of the University of Pennsylvania Alumni Club of Western PA, the invitees of these events are the members of the eight local Ivy League Plus Alumni Clubs, also cross referencing invitees with the Allegheny Harvard, Yale, Princeton Club and its affiliate members.
Thursday, June 6, 2024
EKTO VR Receives Patent Approval
In a June 4, 2024 post on LinkedIn, EKTO VR, founded by CEO Brad Factor, has announced that it has received patent approval by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The 2020 VentureBridge company and maker of virtual reality boots just celebrated its sixth year anniversary.
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
