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Inroducing the VentureBridge '25 Startups!
The CMU VentureBridge (VB) program is back again and excited to announce its investment in 14 startups as a part of the CMU VB ’25 funding cycle. The CMU-alumni-founders span across the country and hail from the School of Computer Science, College of Engineering and the Tepper School of Business, where they are building solutions across AI infrastructure, intelligent agents, robotics, healthtech, cleantech and industrial automation.
Congratulations to these incredible startups!
April, Blume, Clear Solar Corporation, Edulis Therapeutics, Flaflow, Fort, Kaavio, Kashikoi, Mesh, OctaPulse, Quivl AI, Sabana, Solstis and Wood Wide AI.
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|  | Hans Kumar (left) and Hardik Singh, Boost Robotics
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Y Combinator Announces Launch of CMU Alumni Founded Boost Robotics
Y Combinator has announced the launch of Boost Robotics, a company building mobile robots capable of dexterous manipulation to perform routine tasks inside data centers. Beyond maintenance, their robots will provide 24/7 monitoring and inventory management at these highly secure facilities.
Boost Robotics is co-founded by CMU alumni Hans Kumar (MSR '21, CIT '19) and Hardik Singh (MRSD '23, CIT '19), who is also a 2021-23 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow. Before this venture, Hans was a Staff Software Engineer at Boston Dynamics, where he worked on productizing computer vision algorithms for the Spot robot. Hardik was Robotics Team Lead at an agtech startup developing cross-platform autonomy as a package for drones, rovers, and tractors. They’ve been friends since their freshman year at CMU, where they met after joining the CMU Bhangra team. They both went on to earn Master’s degrees from the CMU Robotics Institute, and kickstarted their careers in Pittsburgh's robotics ecosystem.
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EKTO VR Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign
with Honeycomb Credit
EKTO VR, 2020 VentureBridge participant and developer of immersion-enhancing products for the 170 million users in the $6B virtual reality market—founded by CMU MRSD alumnus and CEO Brad Factor—will be launching an equity crowdfunding campaign with Honeycomb Credit on Monday.
Participants can sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live. The team will be pitching and answering questions at Honeycomb's birthday celebration next Tuesday evening, and Honeycomb will waive their fees on Monday and Tuesday as a gift to investors who get in early!
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Benetech Named to Forbes Accessibility 100 List
Benetech, developer of inclusive technology that empowers all learners, has been named to the Forbes Accessibility 100 List—a global honor spotlighting the top 100 organizations revolutionizing accessibility worldwide. Carnegie Mellon University alumnus Ayan Kishore is CEO of Benetech.
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VENTUREBRIDGE '25 FOUNDERS SPOTLIGHT
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Welcome to the VentureBridge '25 Founders Spotlight!
For the next few weeks, we will feature the founders of the '25 VentureBridge cohort.Join us in celebrating these amazing companies.
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|  | Derek Gregg (right) and Samuel Bobb (left)
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VentureBridge '25 Cohort Spotlight: Derek Gregg, Kaavio
Co-founded by CMU alumnus, CEO and James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow Derek Gregg and Northwestern University alumnus Samuel Bobb, Kaavio is building the agentic future of how factories, labs and job sites buy $8.5T in technical products.
In this spotlight series, we take a behind the scenes look at an interview with Derek at the beginning of the VentureBridge program in May.
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Job Alert: Troupe AI is Hiring Software Engineers
Troupe, co-founded by CMU Tepper School of Business alumnus and CEO Austin Webb, is an AI-as-a-Service for marketing and sales teams focused on quantifying "what you are saying to the market" for the first time. At Troupe, AI teammates do the work of a team of experts analyzing all of its users' external communications, so they can instantly measure consistency, as well as identify what’s working, what’s not, and what to do about it—increasing their pipeline velocity and win rates from top to bottom of funnel.
Troupe is seeking to hire Software Engineers to help develop software solutions that fulfill the company's vision—to empower every organization and its people with the ability to confidently say the right thing.
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Secure Your Agentic RAG Chatbots With Realm
Labs & ApertureDB
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM | PST
Location: Virtual (YouTube)
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) chatbots are powerful—but when they access enterprise data, security isn’t optional. Join two CMU VentureBridge founders for a fast-paced, insight-packed session on how to build permission-aware agentic RAG chatbots that scale securely.
Saurabh Shintre (Founder, Realm Labs) & Vishakha Gupta ( Co-founder, ApertureData) will guide you through a proven architecture combining Realms’s RAG security framework and ApertureDB’s vector-graph multimodal AI database—ideal for building secure, scalable, and high-performing Agentic RAG chatbots.
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Pittsburgh Search Community Meetup!
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2025
Time: 5:30 - 7:30 PM | ET
Location: Lawrence Hall, 4609 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201
Welcome to the Pittsburgh Search Community Meetup! Join us at Lawrence Hall for an evening of networking and learning. This event, which has been organized by Tepper School of Business MBA alumnus Jack Boyle, is a perfect opportunity to share your experiences and connect with like-minded individuals who are exploring or operating in the space.
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The Swank Special Projects Team Invites the CMU Swartz Center and CMU/Pittsburgh entrepreneurship community to a friendly game of Pickleball on Thursday, May 29 from 7-8:30 am at Washington's Landing.
Email jaimel@swankco.com to RSVP!
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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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Special Announcement!
The CMU T&E has launched its new website, which also includes a newly revamped Jobs Board, available for people across the community to share and seek new opportunities in the startup & entrepreneurship ecosystem. Find out more and visit the website here.
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. Headline TextDesign best-practices suggest a large font size for easy readability both on desktop and mobile devices.
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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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Steptoe & Johnson PLLC
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC is a multi-jurisdictional, full-service law firm that takes a progressive approach to providing counsel at each stage of a client’s life cycle. Our dedicated team works closely with our clients to form entities, advise on the most advantageous entity type, and design and negotiate joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions. If a client has a dispute, Steptoe & Johnson has a team of business and product liability litigators and labor and employment lawyers to guide clients through these often stressful and disruptive situations.
Steptoe & Johnson brings a strong skillset for data privacy, cyber security and intellectual property matters which are frequent concerns for startups and technology companies. We offer competitive and flexible rates and aim to provide value to our clients.
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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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