The Monthly Beat - August '25 Edition
A recap of the most interesting Pittsburgh tech news from the past few weeks, upcoming local tech events, and extras for the days ahead.
Good morning!
Summer is flying by. Hope you are staying cool and hydrated. As I write this, I’m sitting in our dining room near the window with the whirring sound of cicadas and locusts drifting in, reminding me of the whirring of the many servers, sensors, and machines powering Pittsburgh tech companies.
Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but you get the picture. These bugs are so noisy.
Anyways, let’s get into it.
What Happened This Past Month
The Big Story
The Biggest Investment Announced at the Energy and Innovation Summit is Likely Undisclosed
The city’s top headline was tech-related this past month. The Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit was held here in Pittsburgh, and much of the discussion therein centered around the energy infrastructure necessary to power AI data centers. Donald Trump’s visit for the summit sparked a wave of protests around Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where it was held, while CMU professors voiced concerns about the summit’s focus on fossil fuels. Indeed, silly partisan quotes such as “You need the natural gas or coal infrastructure in order to provide these giant AI data centers the power that they need.” were plentiful despite the fact that new clean energy infrastructure is cheaper than new fossil fuel infrastructure.
When all was said and done, at first glance, it doesn’t really seem like the summit resulted in anything new or substantive for Pittsburgh outside of CMU. The vast majority of investments promised seem to be for projects in other parts of the state, several of which were already in progress before the summit occurred. For instance, the biggest public investment in Pittsburgh that was touted at the summit, $135 million for an Energy Innovation Center Infrastructure Academy, was actually made over a year ago by the Biden Administration. Additionally, in a few cases, the promised spending announced by Senator McCormick’s office doesn’t actually match the pledges made by the companies themselves.
However, one undisclosed investment, which manifests itself as one, tiny dot just north of Allegheny County on Technical.ly’s funding map, could be game-changing.
At the summit, Westinghouse announced “a plan to deliver 10 AP1000® reactors in the US, with construction to begin by 2030” that will “drive $75 billion of economic value across the United States with $6 billion of value here in Pennsylvania.” Neither of those numbers are the actual amount being invested by the U.S. government, though.
So how much money is this, really? Institute For Progress (IFP), a non-partisan think tank focused on innovation policy, offers a detailed breakdown of the issues contributing to the costs of building reactors. This was a pretty interesting read, but here’s one relevant anecdote they shared at the top:
Two reactors being built in Georgia (the only current nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S.) are projected to cost twice their initial estimates, and two South Carolina reactors were canceled after costs rose from $9.8 billion to $25 billion.
IFP published this article in early May 2023. The final cost of those two reactors in Georgia at the end of May was $31 billion, $3 billion higher than IFP reported at the beginning of the month! So if Westinghouse wants to build 10 new reactors—in the absence of unprecedented zoning reform and other efforts to streamline the process—we’re talking, with some napkin math, at least $155 billion in investment from the U.S. government in a Pittsburgh-based tech company. Obviously, Westinghouse isn’t as trendy a tech company as a new school AI firm, but that’s more funding than all the other announced “investments” combined!
But then again, of those 10 reactors, those built in PA could cost less thanks to, well, unprecedented zoning reform. Governor Josh Shapiro, who also attended the summit, has a track record of cutting red tape to unblock big projects and reduce their costs.
The Headlines
Skild AI (which makes the robot featured at the top of this post) released a launch video for its “robot brain,” which is able to power several different types of robots. Personally, I wasn’t super impressed by it, as several of the clips in the video appear to be sped up dramatically, and the more difficult tasks that are shown appear to be in highly staged environments. An article from Technical.ly also pointed out that the company’s latest SEC filing doesn’t match up with the funding it purportedly has secured. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, though, especially if you have a background in robotics!
X-Hab has successfully used its 3D concrete printing (3DCP) system to build a structure in subarctic Alaska. This was merely a test structure, but is still the northernmost 3DCP structure on the continent and the first step towards building affordable housing in Alaska with 3DCP (not to mention it’s freaking cool). The company says, “Next spring, the team plans to print a 1,200-square-foot house in the City of Nome based on lessons learned from the test structure.”
Aurora is now trucking autonomously all through the night. The press release calls out that “37% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur at night” and that “the Aurora Driver can detect objects in the dark more than 450 meters away, identifying pedestrians, vehicles, and debris up to 11-seconds sooner than a traditional driver.”
Synopsys finally finished acquiring Ansys. So… should I still report on Ansys? I mean, it’s still here in Pittsburgh, but is it truly Pittsburgh-based now? I don’t know, what do yinz think?
Folks on the Pittsburgh Subreddit continued to lament the difficult tech job market. Some users debated the root cause, while one user declared, “Part of the problem is no matter how much Pittsburgh wants to pretend it’s some big tech center, it’s just not.” Okay. Obviously, we still have some work to do, as called out by the CEO of Gecko. But I’m pretty sure that’s not even part of the jobs problem, and the problem really is our economy as a whole is slowing down. And if this blog isn’t enough to convince you that Pittsburgh is a “tech center”, I don’t know what is. I won’t say that it’s “big” though—that’s fair.
For those of you who do mobile development, Carter Levin from Duolingo published an interesting technical article on how they use Swift Macros for iOS development. “Swift Macros is new and not widely adopted yet. But we love trying emerging tools when they make our code cleaner and our team faster,” he says. Duolingo was also one of two Pittsburgh companies that made it onto Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies list. The other was Dick’s Sporting Goods.
ICYMI, I posted an opinion piece in reaction to the GPT-5 announcement. This one really seemed to resonate with a lot of folks in multiple ways, and I’ve had so many great conversations as a result.
Last but not least, for a nice watch/listen as you start your day, InnovatePGH published an interview with local startup founder Miles Mufaka Martin. His startup, Relai, creates and maintains “exchange zones” designed to enable the secure, asynchronous exchange of goods between people.
For the Days Ahead
Looking for a weekly hangout with other folks who are interested in technology and entrepreneurship? Technically Coffee is a great one, 8am every Friday at Bakery Square. Sign up here.
This month’s AI@Work event on the 19th is sold out, but if you’re an AI Builder and interested in joining, you can sign up here. I learn so much at every single one of these. Cannot recommend enough.
Code & Supply Build Night is Monday, August 25th. Build Night is an impromptu co-working space where you can work on a project, pair, learn, and mingle. Doors open at 6pm. Sign up here.
PyData Pittsburgh is hosting their next workshop on Thursday, August 28th, entitled “Python for All: Democratizing Coding Mastery with AI Chatbot Support”. Read all about it and sign up here.
Are you having trouble making time to visit subarctic Alaska to see X-Hab’s 3DCP structures, or even just to get a haircut? Check out Confirmed, a locally owned and developed time manager/scheduler app. Plans start at $5/month for a single user, and you can get your first month free with offer code
techbeat!
Next month’s post should be closer to the beginning of the month now that summer’s winding down and I have more time to write. And I should have another bonus piece for you next month as well. Till then, all the best!
—Austin
Great roundup thank you for putting this together.