The Monthly Beat - March '26 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! I am back from a distant land, recovered from jet lag, and ready to write this post now. The new PIT airport is great though, and contrasts strongly with Chicago’s ORD, most of which feels like a crowded alleyway wrapped in plastic.
Anyways, let’s take a look at what’s been going down in the local tech scene.
What Happened the Past Few Weeks
The CMU Robotics Innovation Center (RIC) was officially opened in Hazelwood Green (pictured above). Several CMU big wigs, leaders from Hazelwood community organizations, and Governor Josh Shapiro were in attendance for the robot-assisted ribbon-cutting ceremony. The space is huge, and is the target for $1.5 million state grant to fund a “Physical AI Accelerator” to host collaboration among local startups and CMU researchers.
Shortly after the RIC was opened, CMU announced a big event for the space in partnership with the AI Strike Team: they’re bringing in Mark Cuban for a $1,575,000 sports technology pitch competition the day before the NFL Draft. The event is invite-only (I’ve been poking some of my contacts to see if I can get in, we’ll see.) If you’re interested in pitching, though, you can submit an application on this page.
FieldAI, a company focused on embodied AI in robotics, is the first firm to inhabit the CMU RIC. They were featured heavily in the opening ceremony, and they appear to have the same general goal as Skild: building a universal robot brain that can operate any sort of hardware. They are also hiring like crazy.
Speaking of hiring, Gather.ai landed $40M in funding to help with their global expansion, platform development, and scaling their team. They did not disclose their new valuation, but their hiring page is showing some new roles for those who may be interested.
Aurora continued to expand their driverless trucking operations across the Sun Belt. Aurora driverless trucks are now on the roads between Dallas and Houston, Fort Worth and El Paso, El Paso and Phoenix, Fort Worth and Phoenix, and Dallas and Laredo with a perfect safety record thus far. The company has also updated its software to handle more inclement weather, stating that “inclement weather of all types constrained Aurora’s driverless operations in Texas roughly 40% of the time last year.”
Technical.ly published updates to their AI data center project tracker page, showing some progress in a few cases. Notably, there doesn’t appear to be any publicly announced progress towards Anthropic’s $1 million partnership with CMU, and a project engineer said electrical work may begin this spring on the $15 billion, 700-acre data centers near Carlisle.
Just across the state line, West Virginia University Medicine is expanding its use of Pittsburgh-based Abridge’s AI medical transcription systems. The software is saving doctors about 11 minutes per day and “staff who use Abridge also report feeling less stressed or burnt out,” according to Dr. David Rich, Chief Medical Information Officer at WVU Medicine.
Also in health tech, Xlue, a local startup developing cancer-catching AI, had a great profile piece in Technical.ly. The company has been training its models on health records in Taiwan, and the models are now able to predict cancer with 50-70% accuracy. They are hoping to partner with UPMC soon to gain secure access to more health records with which they can continue to improve accuracy while maintaining patient privacy.
Meanwhile, up in Troy Hill, startup BioInterphase just moved into to the old Troy Hill firehouse after a beautiful renovation. According to the article, though, the firehouse is rumored to be haunted, and “a medium who the team had come through the space recently said the rumors are true.” The building is apparently inhabited by three protective spirits; hopefully the company can appease them.
Local web designer guru Brad Frost shared a fantastic video essay on this moment in AI (you can also read it as a text post if you prefer that!) Definitely worth a watch/read if you’ve been trying to process the cognitive whiplash of current events.
Last but not least, Astrobotic has been awarded a contract by Italy’s space agency to develop a lunar wheel. I’d love to see a lunar Ferrari rocking a set of these:
A concept render of Astrobotic’s lunar wheel. (Source: Astrobotic)
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 Wednesday, Pittsburgh’s local chapter of getWITit is holding an event entitled Women in Technology: Perspectives Across Career Stages at BNY. The event will be a moderated panel discussion featuring women from many different stages in their tech careers. Sign up here.
This Thursday’s AI@Work meetup is sold out. This is without question the best local AI meetup geared towards folks actually building things with AI. If you’re interested in joining the community and/or attending the next meetup, sign up here.
Also this week, there’s a high school robotics competition at the convention center downtown. Admission is free! You can view the schedule here or watch the livestream at the links shown here.
Coming up next week on March 26th, PyData has another event at CoLab18 called An Unexpected Journey: Life Lessons from Conquering Tesla Solar with Python, a talk about “the unexpected lessons you learn when you trust your instincts and refuse to accept ‘it’s working fine’ as an answer.” Sign up here.
Just before the NFL Draft, Pittsburgh Robotics Network will be hosting their Robotics & Tech Happy Hour on April 21st at The Reserve. Tickets are $20 for tech professionals. Sign up here.
If you want an easy way to be notified of local tech events more often than monthly, check out this Luma calendar hosted by Charles Mansfield III. It rocks.
Do YOU have an event you’d like to share on this very newsletter? Please hit me up!
That’s it for this month. Have a great rest of your week!
—Austin