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Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Gather AI Named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026
, co-founded by Sankalp Arora, CEO, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, was recently named to Fast Company's 'Most Innovative Companies of 2026' in the Logistics category.
Warehouses run the global economy, yet for decades operators have been making critical decisions without a clear view of what’s actually happening on the floor. We built Gather AI to change that - bringing real-time, reliable data into physical operations and turning it into action.
This recognition reflects the scale of that shift and the team and customers driving it forward.
Over the past year, we’ve doubled our operational footprint, grown bookings 250%, and raised a $40M Series B to expand globally. Still early, but the direction is clear.
Friday, March 20, 2026
The annual McGinnis Venture and Social Enterprise Prize Competition was held at ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV and the Swartz Center on Tuesday, March 17, with startups competing for the largest prize pool ever at $375K.
The competition, which has been held since 2004 and was established by an endowment from the Swartz Center's long time friend and entrepreneur Gerald McGinnis, founder of Respironics, was the largest competition yet with over 400 in attendance. Held at ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV's McConomy Auditorium and the Swartz Center, the event was kicked off by Meredith Meyer Grelli, Swartz Center Managing Director, with opening remarks given by Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O'Conner, County Executive Sara Innamorato and U.S. Senator Dave McCormick. This year's event was the most competitive to date, with a 70% increase in student entries over last year.
Throughout the day, 22 student-led startups pitched to a panel of 17 investors, who then judged the competition. Pitches ranged from a variety of industries and concepts, including drug discovery, video game hardware and of course, artificial intelligence.
The $375K prize pool was backed in part by new support from the David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund. In total, the competition awarded $125K in cash investments and $250K in Amazon Web Service credits.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
The Swartz Center Hosts Fireside Chat with Tris Jahanian and Martha Harty, Founders of EdTech Startup Martris
Last Friday, the Swartz Center hosted a Fireside Chat over lunch with special guests Tris Jahanian and Martha Harty, founders of edtech startup, Martris. During the talk, entitled "It's a Business, Not an App: Lessons Learned", Tris and Martha shared how they came to launch Martris, an edtech startup that brings conflict management to mobile, what it really takes to turn research into product, build across disciplines, navigate the startup journey and learn (and relearn) as founders.
Martha built her career in conflict resolution, developing pioneering interactive tools at Carnegie Mellon and helping teams learn how to navigate hard conversations, and Tris spent 30+ years engineering secure financial systems, holding two patents in high-performance distributed transaction authorization and building technology used by financial institutions nationwide.
The conversation was moderated by Anika Halappanavar, CMU Human Computer Interaction/Business student and 2025-27 Undergraduate Innovation Scholar.
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
RoboForce ('24 VentureBridge), a pioneer in Physical AI-powered Robo-Labor, has announced it has secured a $52M oversubscribed funding round, bringing the total raised to $67M. The new capital will accelerate the company’s next-generation robot foundation model, scale general-purpose Physical AI robots, and drive manufacturing readiness for commercial deployment.
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Gecko Robotics has announced it has secured a five-year contract from the U.S. Navy with a ceiling of $71M. The company utilizes a suite of robotics and artificial intelligence to perform inspections of infrastructure that would be difficult or dangerous for a human to complete. Gecko, which has previously worked with the Navy, will now start working on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
, a New Delhi, India-based developer of a digital visa processing platform, has raised $36M in Series C funding. The company, founded by CMU and Innovation Scholar alumnus and CEO , intends to use the funds to accelerate its international expansion, specifically targeting new markets in Europe and the Middle East, and to advance its AI roadmap for automated document verification, eligibility checks and real-time traveler support.
Monday, March 16, 2026
Shiv Panjwani, Tepper School of Business MBA, James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow and co-founder of Agilow, was selected to Poets & Quants' 2025 Most Disruptive MBA Startups list. reduces meeting and messaging overload for software development teams by creating conversational, voice-AI teammates who can literally call you, talk to you on the phone and carry information across the team.
Working out of the Swartz Center, Shiv and his Agilow teammates were finalists and pitched in this year's McGinnis Venture Competition.
Friday, March 13, 2026
We are proud to join seven institutions in launching Third Coast Foundry, a new San Francisco hub designed to strengthen connections between Midwest research universities and one of the world’s most active venture ecosystems.
CMU founders are building companies at the forefront of robotics, artificial
intelligence, biotech and other deep technologies. A significant number ultimately grow their ventures in the Bay Area—and as a global university, CMU is committed to supporting founders wherever they are most likely to succeed.
Third Coast Foundry will provide a shared base for university startups, researchers and partners traveling to the Bay Area, creating new opportunities to engage with investors, mentors and alumni across institutions.
The initiative also complements Swartz Center programs, such as the
VentureBridge pre-seed Accelerator and Lab to Market, our semiannual showcase highlighting deep-tech startups, which regularly brings our deep tech startups to the Bay Area.
We look forward to collaborating with partners across the Midwest to help more university innovations reach the marketplace and scale their impact.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Announcing the Gebhardt Sandbox Fund 2026 Cohort
The CMU Swartz Center is excited to announce the twenty CMU student founders that each will be awarded $1K from the Bruce S. Gebhardt Sandbox Fund for the 2026 cycle. This fund established in 2025 provides crucial early stage capital to founders as they build, test, and launch their ventures.
This year marked our most competitive application cycle yet, with applications more than doubling from last year. The surge in interest reflects the remarkable momentum we are seeing across the Carnegie Mellon entrepreneurial ecosystem, as more students and researchers take the leap to build and scale bold new ideas.
As a special addition this year, an additional three founders will be selected from the McGinnis Venture Competition and Social Enterprise Prize Final Round founders to complete the 2026 cohort.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
For the past five years, the Pittsburgh Business Times has annually highlighted startups in the region's various technology sectors worth watching. This year's list of ten Startups to Watch in 2026 spans across the greater Pittsburgh region and a variety of sectors, including hardware, artificial intelligence and life sciences.
Among the startups that made the list are CMU's , co-founded by Alyssa Theroux and Mary Squire, and , co-founded by Dr. Kataki Desai and Christina Ramirez.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Miranda Nover, CMU Mechanical Engineering alumna, VentureBridge '25 cohort participant and CEO, co-founder of strength training wearable company, (YC W26), is featured in this month's edition of Wired.
Fort, a slim wearable that automatically tracks strength training, recently launched with its final production hardware and system and is available for preorder.
Friday, March 6, 2026
The McGinnis VC & SEP Final Round Teams Competing for $375K in Prizes Have Been Announced!
After a rigorous Round 1 and Round 2 process, the final undergraduate and graduate teams for the McGinnis Venture Competition have been announced. With just over a week to go, excitement is building for the final pitches and celebration on March 17.
The finalist teams will compete for the newly expanded $375,000 prize pool. This includes $125,000 in cash investment awards, made possible by the David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund, and $250,000 in AWS Activate credits provided by AWS for Startups.
Join us for the final round and help celebrate the next generation of student founders!
Friday, March 6, 2026
Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft WeekShowcase on April 22
The Swartz Center will host a $1.275M national pitch competition during the NFL Draft week in partnership with the NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers and AI Strike Team. “Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase,” will highlight startups at the intersection of sports and tech on Wednesday, April 22 at the new Carnegie Mellon Robotics Innovation Center.
A panel of high profile judges, including Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor; Ed Stack, Chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods and Foot Locker; Will Allen, former Pittsburgh Steeler and Partner at Magarac Venture Partners; and Deap Ubhi of AWS Startups, will decide the top pitches from around the country and the world.
The prize pool is made possible through major investments including $1M in cloud compute credit from AWS for Startups and $250K in investment from Magarac Venture Partners.
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Local robotics startup announced it was awarded a $850,000 SBIR Phase II contract from NASA to develop hardware components for use in outer space. HEBI was founded in 2014 as a spin-off of ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV's Biorobotics lab.
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
, led by CEO John Thornton, announced it was awarded a contract from a French company to develop a wheel that would be used to help astronauts live on the moon. Astrobotic will develop a wheel system to be used to allow the MPH to move along the moon's uneven terrain.
Friday, February 27, 2026
McGinnis Venture Competition Unveils $375,000 in Prizes, Backed by David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund and AWS
The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and the Tepper School of Business at ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV announce the establishment of the David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund, creating a new endowed $50,000 annual Morgenthaler Prize to support the CMU’s flagship McGinnis Venture Competition.
This visionary commitment increases the competition’s total cash investment awards to $125,000 and contributes to an overall $375,000 prize package, which also includes $250,000 in AWS Activate credits for winning teams.
The newly endowed Morgenthaler Prize will be awarded annually to the competition’s first-place team, providing transformative early-stage capital at a critical moment in venture formation and growth. The endowment ensures that generations of Carnegie Mellon student entrepreneurs will benefit from the Morgenthalers’ enduring commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship.
Learn more about the transformational Morgenthaler Gift
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Two founders from ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV are semifinalists in the Microsoft 2026 Imagine Cup. , Tepper School of Business MBA and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, founder of and , CMU's College of Engineering, co-founder of SpoilSafe. Surya and Vivaan are both working out of the CMU Swartz Center.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
CMU Health Startups That Could Improve Patient Care
At ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV, breakthroughs in robotics, materials science and bioengineering are increasingly shaped by a shared goal—making health care more precise and less burdensome for patients and providers. Meet four CMU-affiliated startups that are translating academic research into tools that could improve health care for millions of Americans:
Humotech (Josh Caputo), Edulis Therapeutics (Spencer Matonis, VentureBridge 2025), FluidFormBio (Adam Feinberg) and Advanced Optronics (Jay Reddy, VentureBridge 2022).
Friday, February 20, 2026
The CMU Swartz Center Strengthened CMU’s Silicon Valley Connections at Lab to Market Investor Summit
ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV tightened its connection to Silicon Valley by hosting a tech investor showcase in San Francisco, CA last Wednesday.
CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship brought together entrepreneurs and high-powered venture capitalists to meet and exchange insights with CMU professors and researchers at Swartz’s exclusive Lab to Market Spring 2026 event on February 11, 2026, held at Pear VC. The Summit began with entrepreneurial inspiration in the form of a keynote conversation with Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity—the breakthrough AI search engine company valued last September at $20B. Speaking to Sameer Gandhi—partner at renowned VC firm Accel, founded by CMU alumnus Jim Swartz, Srinivas told the audience of about 250 people that tech success comes with pain and paranoia.
The day was a combination of real talk about Silicon Valley’s interest in the next big thing and a chance for Carnegie Mellon faculty and students with tech startup companies or startup ambitions to show their innovative ideas, share learnings and make important connections. The focus was on two areas of innovation now obsessing the tech world: AI and physical AI (otherwise known as robotics). The Pittsburgh campus is the birthplace of both artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicle technology, and the results of such cutting-edge research were obvious to Lab to Market participants.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
, founded in 2023 by a team of researchers, professors and alumni from ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV, has announced it has raised $60M in a Series A round, led by New York City and Bay Area investment group Triatomic Capital.
The company has developed a general purpose computer processor that it says is approximately 100 times more energy-efficient than leading processors on the market. It was also named a Startup to Watch by the Pittsburgh Business Times in 2024.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
recently announced its biggest launch in its history, Peloton Interactive's Personal Trainer, powered by Trainwell.
Trainwell founder Matt Spettel shared, "We’re creating what we believe is the most comprehensive virtual personal training experience in the market by fusing Peloton’s incredible magic formula of premium equipment, intuitive software and expert human instructors, with Trainwell’s deep personalization and human accountability. Our trainers onboard every client face-to-face, hand-craft plans that combine Peloton’s strength, cardio and recovery class content while holding clients accountable through consistent communication and check-ins".
to get in on the action!
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
CMU Team Takes Second Place and $2K at the 3 Rivers Venture Fair
ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Professor and HCI Post Doctoral Fellow (PhD Innovation & Commercialization Fellow), recently won second place and received $2K for their company, Analogical Engines, at the 3 Rivers Venture Fair (3RVF) hosted by the PIttsburgh Venture Capital Association (PVCA) on February 4-5, 2026.
The (3RVF) is Pittsburgh's premier venture capital event, connecting high-growth startups with investors, corporate partners, and innovation leaders since 2002.
Friday, February 13, 2026
Gather AI (VentureBridge '18 startup), the leader in Physical AI for logistics, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Smith Point Capital Management. The investment includes participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Tribeca Venture Partners, Bling Capital, Dundee Venture Capital, XRC Ventures, and new investor The Hillman Company. To date, the company has raised $74 million.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
The Pittsburgh Business Times 2026 class of 30 Under 30 honorees has been selected. Among the honorees is Steven Guo, Program Manager, Student & Alumni Founder Pipeline at the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
This year's class of honorees will be honored in a series of profiles in a special edition of the Pittsburgh Business Times on March 20. They will also be honored at an awards celebration in April.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Lunon, co-founded by Carnegie Mellon students Dhruv Shajikumar (CEO), Ryan Hyatt (COO) and Connor Hyatt (CTO), have announced via LinkedIn Lunon’s pre-seed round, led by General Catalyst and including SV Angel, Genius Ventures and their phenomenal angels Shuo Wang, Cory Levy and Menelaos Mazarakis. The team also gives special thanks to their first investor Joshua Browder, CEO at DoNotPay, for being their first believer.
Lunon is a secure AI workspace designed specifically for consulting firms. It brings research, analysis and client-ready outputs into one system, with strict client-by-client data isolation and enterprise-grade controls, all built around how consulting work actually happens. To accelerate development, the founders are relocating to San Francisco to work side by side with consulting teams.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
On February 4-7, an enthusiastic group of MBA students from the ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV Tepper School of Business including Yule (YJ) Lin (James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow 2025-27) Barakissa Gakou, Tarsh (Tarshish) K, and Jessica Figard (Innovation Scholar and JD/MBA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Tepper School of Business) represented CMUTepper at
The team took first place, winning $7K for their response their assigned problem: How do you build culturally trained AI agents that support people's religions, cultures and preferences in a cost-effective and scalable way? The team suggested a RAG Architecture that incorporated human feedback through an App they designed to help create workshops for EBG's/ERG's/BRG's to create experiences to learn from each other, while doubling as an interface to train AI on culturally nuanced data.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
AlphaLab has announced the companies joining its 2026 cohort. This year’s cohort includes 20 startups, making it the largest AlphaLab has supported at once. The companies span AI-driven software, health innovation, robotics, energy and advanced manufacturing, with a shared focus on embedding intelligence into systems and products used in real-world environments.
Several startups from CMU made the list including: , , , , and .
Friday, February 6, 2026
PDS Health®, a leading integrated healthcare support organization, has selected as its enterprise partner to expand the use of artificial intelligence that supports real-time radiologic review and enterprise-level clinical insight across its more than 1,100 dental practices nationwide. Founded by CMU alumnus and CEO Ophir Tanz, Pearl’s platform will provide real-time radiologic support and enterprise-grade clinical intelligence to support diagnostic consistency and clinical insight at scale.
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
