The Monthly Beat

A recap of the most interesting news from August 2023, plus some extras for your September.

Hey everyone!

Hope you had a decent Monday. Welcome back to the monthly summary of the most interesting Pittsburgh tech news I could find from the past month. You’ll notice some slight format changes below as I continue to experiment with the format. Also, the podcast is back! If you prefer to listen to your news, check it out on Apple Podcasts or by clicking the play button on this post.

All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh unless otherwise noted.

Here’s what happened in August:

• Niche launched Direct Admissions, a real-time college acceptance and scholarship program. The program effectively eliminates the need for a traditional college application process by connecting students with schools based on the information in their Niche profile. Niche plans to have 100 different schools participating in the program by the end of the year.

• A collection of local organizations launched a new fellowship called PEER (Promoting Emerging Entrepreneurs in Robotics) to equip local underrepresented groups for work in robotics and connect them to the local tech scene. Check out the link for information on how to sign up and be sure to share with friends who might be interested!

• Future tech hub Hazelwood Green continues to develop. Pitt outlined its plans for “BioForge,” a cell- and gene-therapy facility, which will be under construction starting this fall pending permits from the city. Hazelwood residents have mixed feelings, with some saying they feel out of the loop concerning what has been planned for the neighborhood.

• Preamble AI, a startup offering software that embeds security measures and ethics into AI, was selected to be part of NVIDIA’s business development program. Hopefully it’s successful, as it seems like AI is mostly getting more evil on the daily.

• Speaking of evil AI, the Office of the District Attorney of Allegheny County is deploying AI to assist in gathering digital evidence in the cloud. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.

• Speaking of offices, global tech company Fujitsu is moving into new offices in Oakland in preparation for tripling their local presence, and word on the street is that the Argo cofounders are buying another office in the Strip and starting another self-driving business. There’s a chance it could be that conspicuously empty building that was being built next to the highway right when the pandemic hit, but that might not have enough room depending on what they’re planning to do. This is a very interesting development, given that Ford has already moved on to Latitude AI for its future assisted-driving needs.

• Uber enabled audio recording for trips in Pittsburgh. We love more surveillance from a company that already has a terrible track record for it.

• In case you stop at a 7-Eleven for a pop while Ubering, don’t worry. You’ll still be under surveillance, or rather your pop will be. Shelfmark, an inventory monitoring startup that uses cameras and software to monitor inventory levels, now has cameras up and running in several 7-Eleven stores around Pittsburgh. Oh thank Heaven?

• Mega Cat Studios in Bloomfield has launched a new video game, WrestleQuest. It’s a turn-based RPG with beautiful animations and stars 30 real-life wrestlers, including “Macho Man” Randy Savage, the creeeeeam of the crop!

• In other entertainment news, live music performance software startup Conduction put on a show with a 40-person orchestra in Munhall. The software allowed a DJ to manipulate the sounds produced by the orchestra live to create electronic dance music.

• Amazon is opening a new warehouse in New Stanton, outside Pittsburgh. The warehouses will continue until deliveries improve.

• Speaking of Amazon, Pitt is now using their Just Walk Out technology at the Market, allowing students to “just walk out” with stuff and get charged like at an Amazon Store. You still have to scan your app when you enter the store, though. So, is it better than just checking out like normal? If you’re a current Pitt student, I’d love to hear your take in the comments!

• Finally, Agtech startup Four Growers is now harvesting cucumbers with robots, in addition to their existing tomato harvesting capabilities. So now, theoretically, you could have a cucumber tomato salad prepared entirely by robots.

For the month ahead:

• NEXTPittsburgh published an awesome profile of velo.ai, a startup that is creating an AI copilot for bikers. Even if you don’t bike, it’s a great read for a slow morning.

• ProductTank Pittsburgh, a local meetup group for Product Managers to exchange ideas and experiences about everything Product is back in action after a long hiatus! They’re hosting a relaunch event on September 21st. Sign up here!

• Local agile coach and scrum master Nick Yingling’s Agile Decision Games have a new home on Medium. I especially enjoyed the Let the Product Owner Cook game from last month. New games are posted every two weeks, with answers posted the following week, so be sure to follow his page to never miss a game!

Thanks so much for reading. Future posts will go out on the first Monday of each month now that I’m all caught up. Have a great week!

—Austin