After months of searching, a startup accelerator program for robotics-based companies is getting a more permanent home and it's taking two other accelerator programs with it.
Since its launch with six startups this past June, North Side investment firm Innovation Works Inc. has been running its Robotics Factory initiative out of temporary space on Broad Street in East Liberty alongside IW's hardware-focused accelerator program AlphaLab Gear and its software-focused accelerator AlphaLab.
But now, all three accelerators will be moving into about 18,000 square feet of space inside the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania's Tech Forge facility on 47th Street in Lawrenceville following the signing of a lease agreement between IW and RIDC.
The Robotics Factory will be the first of the three to move into the facility and it will be able to do so by Aug. 1 while the other two accelerators are set to follow in the coming months.
In doing so, the Robotics Factory and its accelerator peers will take up about half of the 40,000 square feet of space previously used by autonomous trucking developers Locomation Inc., which laid off most of its staff and reduced nearly all of its operations this past February due to a lack of funding. Locomation subleased the space from another autonomous vehicle peer, Aurora Innovation Inc., which had moved out of the space and into its expanded headquarters in the Strip District back in 2021.
Donald F. Smith Jr., RIDC president, said that IW will take over the lease from Aurora come August alongside another yet-to-be-named tech firm.
"We think in some ways the IW accelerators are the perfect tenant," Smith said. "They're robotics- and automation-oriented and there'll be all these startup companies in this space who then could be potential growth engines for the region's economy."
According to Robotics Factory Interim Managing Director Kevin Dowling, the Tech Forge site boasts many amenities that will benefit the six budding companies it's looking to scale inside of it. It comes equipped with high-bay facilities, a necessity for startups looking to build large robotics operations, as well as generally flexible space to accommodate the many different needs of tech firms.
However, Dowling said one of the biggest perks has everything to do with its proximity to others working in this industry, alluding to the Robotics Row that has formed in Lawrenceville and trickled into the neighboring Strip District in recent years.
"That location is pretty much near the center of gravity of the robotics companies in Lawrenceville and The Strip," Dowling said. "I think being immersed in the community, I think that is the biggest piece."
The Robotics Factory, through IW, offers up to $100,000 of investment into each startup in addition to testing and facility space. Operational and equipment funding for it is being supplied by the $62.7 million federal grant award the region won last fall from the U.S. Economic Development Administration as part of the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, itself an effort that's funding various robotics and robotics-adjacent initiatives over the next four years. IW is collaborating in partnership with the nonprofit Pittsburgh Robotics Network to see much of this work through.
And while it means an eventual departure for IW out of East Liberty, the organization stressed it couldn't have had its award-winning accelerators succeed without the aid of the neighborhood and the landlord, Eddie Lesoon, of the building it occupied.
"Eddie has been incredibly helpful to AlphaLab and AlphaLab Gear over the years and we could not have built these accelerators into the successful programs they are without him," Terri Glueck, vice president of community development and communications at Innovation Works, said in an email statement.
