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The CMU Swartz Center Hosts the AI Venture Studio
AI//VS 2025 Demo Day
Hundreds attended the highly successful AI Venture Studio (AI//VS) 2025 Demo Day event held at the Tepper School of Business and CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. The event kicked off with the Open Coffee: AI Edition event and 1:1 investor meetings, followed by the live Demo Day and ending with faculty and alumni Demos/Research Breakthroughs.
Created in 2024 by Adam Paulisick, CEO of SkillBuilder.io, Professor of Entrepreneurship at CMU's Tepper School of Business and Sean Ammirati, Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship at CMU's Tepper School of Business and co-founder and former Director of the CMU Corporate Startup Lab, AI//VS has adopted proven methods with a modern view to not only build AI solutions or be assisted by AI but to "recruit" AI to teams early and often to act as a founding member.
The AI//VS event gave twenty four companies an opportunity to pitch and network with 25+ investors after the Open Coffee: AI Edition event, where participants were able to meet leading founders, researchers and teams building with AI, and over thirty investors from across the country in town for CMU AI Venture Studio Investor Day. Investors held drop in meetings for any founders ready to raise.
See the 2025 AI//VS companies here.
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| Gather AI Among CB Insights Most Promising
Artificial Intelligence Startups of 2025
CB Insights has launched the 9th annual AI 100—a ranking of the world's top emerging AI companies. From observability to infrastructure security to vertical AI agents, this year's winners are shaping the future of intelligent systems across industries. Gather AI, co-founded by CMU alumni Sankalp Arora, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, made the list.
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Carnegie Mellon Founded Companies Make Pittsburgh Startups to Watch in 2025 List
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| Three Carnegie Mellon University startups, SkildAI, UltronAI and Netail, have been included in Pittsburgh's Startups to Watch in 2025 list.
SkildAI, headquartered in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood and backed by a significant amount of venture capital, is working to build artificial general intelligence for robots. SkildAI was founded in 2023 by CMU professors Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta. UltronAI, founded in 2022 by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Marios Savvides, is developing computer vision software for retailers. Its software is capable of recognizing and matching items from images, giving retailers a wide variety of possible uses, including self checkout monitoring and inventory management. Netail, Inc., first incubated as part of renowned computer scientist Andrew Ng’s LandingAI in 2021 and launched as its own company in 2022 by CEO Mark Chrystal and CTO Barney Govan, provides retailers with an artificial intelligence-powered analytics tool called Profitmind that is capable of identifying and quantifying opportunities to adjust pricing and inventory to meet consumer demand.
The annual Startups to Watch event is on Wednesday, May 7 at Workscape on the South Side.
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|  | UltronAI founder, Marios Savvides
| |  | Ex-Chairman/CEO, LandingAI, Andrew Ng
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Apply to the F (Lux) Fellowship by May 12!
Lux Capital is a >$5B AUM multistage fund investing at the intersection of science and technology, comprised of lead investors of companies such as Hugging Face, Anduril, Applied Intuition, RunwayML, Recursion and many others.
Lux has launched its inaugural f(Lux) Fellowship for the summer of 2025. Undergraduate students building in physical sciences (semis, space, defense, manufacturing), computational sciences (opensource, infra, crypto, AI) and life sciences (bio, healthcare) are eligible to apply.
The fellowship can be done in tandem with an internship, or for those working on a project full time.
The fellowship includes:
•$15K non-dilutive, no strings-attached grant
•All expenses paid retreats at the start + end of the 2025 summer
Personalized mentors from both the Lux investment team and the Lux portfolio
•Rich fellowship programming (fireside chats with portfolio founders, themed discussions, etc.)
Applications are live now and due at the beginning of May 2025. The application is open to anyone from freshman to coterms. Send questions to flux@luxcapital.com.
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Help For an MBA Student's Research Collaboration
Nate Patterson, a James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow in the MBA Class of '25, is working on a research collaboration in behavioral science space with academics at other leading universities.
He and his collaborators are collecting informal survey data, which will help them qualify for additional research funding. Please complete their survey if you have a few minutes!
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Apply to the Beyond 2% Fund by May 9!
The purpose of the Beyond 2% Fund is to provide up to $2K in support for early-stage startup ideas at Carnegie Mellon University's Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship that address the needs of women, as determined by a committee of CMU staff, alumni and friends.
Open to All CMU Student Founders!
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Multimodal AI, Vector DB and Agentic AI (San Francisco)
on Tuesday, May 13!
Join AICamp and CMU VentureBridge on May 13, for an evening of cutting-edge talks on multimodal AI, featuring leaders in computer vision and vector database infrastructure. Explore the future of intelligent systems that see, understand and interact across modalities.
Space is limited. Register now!
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Moon x CMU Founders Meetup & Pitch Event (Palo Alto)
Join a networking and pitch event with members of the CMU network. Hear from students, alumni and other founders within CMU as they pitch their innovative business ideas to an audience including VCs, investors, leaders and peers.
Hosted by Moon and CMU VentureBridge and Alumni Association San Francisco Bay Area Network, this event is an exclusive opportunity to learn about up-and-coming businesses and meet founders and other innovators from CMU San Francisco Bay Area Network.
Space is limited. Register now!
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| 2025 Innovation & Entrepreneurship Summer Kick-off!
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Step into summer with Dentons! Join us for an unforgettable evening of camaraderie, connection and celebration amidst the vibrant pulse of Pittsburgh's innovation and entrepreneurship scene.
Enjoy light hors d'oeuvres and engaging conversations as we gather to reconnect with old friends, forge new alliances and immerse ourselves in the dynamic spirit of innovation.
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| Join us on June 2nd during NY Tech Week for the CMU VentureBridge 2025 Demo Day to watch
pitch presentations from the current cohort and select VentureBridge alumni in the portfolio, followed by a reception.
This event is open to investors and VIPs only.
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| CONNECTS/START SMART LAW SEMINARS
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| Can't make a CONNECTS? Watch on our YouTube channel.
See the full schedule and register for ALL of the seminars here!
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The CONNECTS/START SMART LAW Seminars have ended for the Spring semester and will resume in the Fall.
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The mission of 99 Tartans is to partner with the highest potential, early-stage CMU alumni companies and accelerate their success through access to capital and networks. Find out more.
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CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS
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| Click the images to see upcoming Club events!
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| Big News: We’ve Moved to Substack!
Starting April 2025, the CMU T&E is transitioning from Mailchimp to Substack for their primary newsletter!
You can expect a welcome email—if you don’t receive it, you can manually subscribe at cmutechentrepreneur.substack.com.
We’re excited for this next chapter—see you there!
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| The CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship group aims to build a bridge between CMU students and alumni across the startup and tech continuum. With main chapters in NYC, Pittsburgh, and SF, we offer a range of in-person and online events and programming in the form of panels, workshops, founder/investor engagements, startup support, and socials to foster collaboration, innovation, and networking opportunities.
Join 7,000+ Tartans on our Slack workspace and mailing list for resources and updates on how you can engage in the community and CMU entrepreneurial ecosystem. Find out more and get involved!
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The following companies help directly support our programming and entrepreneurs.
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| Pillsbury and Steptoe & Johnson, PLLC are holding office hours for the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. The office hours are for any interested CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni interested in entrepreneurship or connecting with members of the Swartz Center network.
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Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
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Legal Services Weekly Virtual Office Hours with Matt Kirmayer
Mondays 1:00-3:00 PM ET (10-12 PT)
Matt Kirmayer of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, is offering office hours for newly established startup and emerging companies. Matt specializes in representing technology startups and emerging growth companies, assisting with entity formation, fundraising and overall growth needs. Startup companies with a founder who is a CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni is eligible to register for
an appointment. Complete the Signup Form for a 30 minute session by the Thursday prior to your
desired appointment.
Contact Daria Stokes or Sean Mawhinney for office hours outside of these regular hours.
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PwC
Our purpose—to build trust in society and solve important problems—is at the core of everything we do. It guides how we serve our clients, our people and the world. To help our clients build trust and deliver sustained outcomes, PwC provides professional services across two segments: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Within these segments we bring a range of capabilities to help organizations solve faster, solve more and realize more value. These capabilities include cloud and digital, deals, ESG, cybersecurity and privacy, governance/boards, risk, transformation, tax services and much more. Across our global network of more than 295,000 professionals in 156 countries, we are committed to advancing quality in everything we do.
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HOW TO WORK OUT OF THE SWARTZ CENTER
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Swartz Center Education and Resources
No matter what phase of the entrepreneurship cycle you're in, there are programs and resources at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship that will take your idea to the next level. Find out more.
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Project Olympus Incubator Program
Want more help with finding product/market fit, developing your business model, making connections and attracting funding? Project Olympus will team you up with a business coach to develop a personalized ‘roadmap. Find out more.
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COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES
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FIND OUT WHAT OUR PARTNERS ARE DOING
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Have startup news or opportunities to share? Have questions about the Swartz Center Weekly Bulletin? Send news, opportunities or questions to Sonya Ford, Program Manager.
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Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center For Entrepreneurship
5000 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 |
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