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| CMU Startup Week in Just 2 Weeks!
Date: September 24–26, 2025
We’re launching something big. Introducing CMU Startup Week—a three-day celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation and the unstoppable energy of the CMU startup ecosystem!
From AI and robotics venture showcases to a startup job fair, tech talks, talent connections and deep tech breakthroughs, this campus-wide extravaganza will bring together students, faculty, founders, investors and innovators from every corner of Carnegie Mellon University.
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Investing in Immigrant Founders: The Unshackled Ventures Story
Date: Wednesday, September 24!
Join us to hear from Unshackled Ventures, the only early-stage venture capital fund dedicated to enabling immigrant founders to start companies in the U.S.
Since 2014, Unshackled has proven that backing this overlooked population drives exceptional returns across industries like American infrastructure, generative AI, healthcare, space, and enterprise SaaS.
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| CMU Swartz Center Hits Record Attendance at Annual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Event
The CMU Swartz Center hosted its annual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp event on Friday, September 5, welcoming 700+ students from across CMU's campus to learn about resources and programs offered by the Center and to hear from alumni founders and Pittsburgh partners.
The event kicked off with the Swartz Center's Interim Executive Director Meredith Meyer Grelli, who welcomed the students while highlighting the many programs, funding opportunities and resources available to students interested in entrepreneurship. This year's fireside chat was given by CMU alumnus Sankalp Arora, founder of Pittsburgh's Gather AI, which was moderated by CMU Computer Science/Business student and Innovation Scholar Avalon Suiero.
Student and alumni panelists and founders discussed everything from building a successful startup to the various entrepreneurship clubs and programs across campus such as the CMU Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association (UEA), CMU Graduate Entrepreneurship Club (GEC), ScottyLabs, Scottie Ventures, Sigma Eta Pi, CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship and the VentureBridge program.
The Swartz Center would like to thank our CMU/Pittsburgh partner representatives from 99 Tartans, the Center for Technology & Enterprise Creation (CTTEC), the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, IDeATe, CMU Libraries, CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship, CMU's College of Engineering, CMU CyLab, Innovation Works, AlphaLab (AlphaLab Gear, AlphaLab Health), the CMU School of Computer Science JP Morgan Chase & Co. AI Maker Space, LifeX Nucleate, Pittsburgh Robotics Factory and CMU's TechSpark!
This year's event also included classical music organized by CMU's Evelyn Davenport, Rachel Boll and Jacob Cruz and ended with networking at the Project Olympus space in Oakland.
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|  | Students attending the networking event at
Project Olympus
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Candid Intelligence Lands $5.5M Seed Round Led by
Quiet Capital
Candid Intelligence co-founder Talha Faiz recently announced that the company has raised a $5.5M Seed round led by Quiet Capital, with support from MIT's E14 Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, Flexcap Ventures, Yann LeCun and others. Candid Intelligence aims to compress months of pre-construction engineering into hours of compute.
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Astrobotic Inks Potentially Historic Contract with Norwegian Spaceport
One of North Shore-headquartered Astrobotic's vehicles could be the first rocket to launch and land itself in Europe. Astrobotic has inked a partnership with Norwegian company Andøya Space to perform a launch campaign of its terrestrial vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing vehicle Xodiac.
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| CMU Spinout SeaLion Energy Helping Pittsburgh to Become a Leader in Advanced Clean
Energy Manufacturing
CMU spinout SeaLion Energy, is working to solve one of the largest pain points in electrification: the ability to maximize usable battery capacity without reducing the battery life, allowing safe battery operation under elevated temperatures and operating voltages and charging speeds. In a recent article in Pittsburgh's Tribune Review, the company is highlighted as one of the local innovators paving the way to helping Pittsburgh become a leader in advanced clean energy manufacturing.
Reeja Jayan, CMU Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the founder and CEO.
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BNY and Carnegie Mellon University Join Forces To Advance Research and Development in AI
BNY, a global financial services company, and Carnegie Mellon University have announced a five-year, $10M agreement to support world-class research and development in artificial intelligence (AI). The collaboration will bring students, faculty and staff from across the University together with BNY experts to advance the state-of-the-art in AI applications and systems and prepare the next generation of leaders.
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Join Juicy EV, Inc. to Help Build the Prototype!
Experienced in hardware prototyping? Join CMU founder and 2024-26 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow Ashwini Karanth and her team in reimagining EV charging—moving from fixed infrastructure to nimble, mobile solutions, and building out the Juicy EV product.
To learn more and join the team, contact akaranth@tepper.cmu.edu.
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CMU First-year Graduate Students!
Apply for the 2025-27 Swartz Fellows Cohort by October 5
Are you a CMU first-year graduate student interested in entrepreneurship, exploring a startup or working on your own while joining a network of startup-minded students? Applications for the 2025-27 cohort of James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows will open on Sunday, August 17 at 11:59 PM ET. The Swartz Fellows program is a two-year program that fast-tracks the careers of CMU's graduate students who are passionate about entrepreneurship.
This highly selective program develops each Fellow's entrepreneurial potential and leadership skills through hands-on experiences, networking, mentoring and courses in entrepreneurship. At the program's core is a mentored summer internship with a top-tier VC-backed startup within the high-tech, high-growth environment of California's Silicon Valley and San Francisco (Bay area encouraged but not required) or another area of preference.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through October 5 at 11:59 PM ET. Early applications are encouraged!
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Next Event Date: September 25, 2025
The Swank Special Projects Team Invites the CMU Swartz Center and CMU/Pittsburgh entrepreneurship community to a friendly game of Pickleball on August 28 and September 25 from 7:00-8:30 AM at Washington's Landing.
Email jaimel@swankco.com to RSVP!
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| CMU VentureBridge (VB) San Francisco Demo Day!
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University is bringing its CMU VB Demo Day to San Francisco's Tech Week! Join us on Tuesday October 7, 2025 in San Francisco to meet CMU’s most promising pre-seed startups. Exclusive to investors and VIPs, this event is your chance to connect with founders and fellow backers shaping the next wave of innovation.
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2025 Corporate Innovation &
Entrepreneurship Fall Social
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Date: Thursday, October 16, 2025
Time: 5:00-7:00 PM | ET
Celebrate the Fall season with a evening hosted by Dentons! Join us for a networking event among the city's innovation and entrepreneurship community. Enjoy light hors d'oeuvres and engaging conversations while gathering to reconnect with old friends, forge new connections and immerse yourself in the dynamic spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology.
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Register for the 2025 Corporate Startup Lab
Case Competition by September 20!
The Corporate Startup Lab (CSL) is excited to announce the 4th Annual Nationwide Case Competition to your graduate student programs. For the third year in a row, CSL is proud to be sponsored by PNC Bank, the 6th largest Bank in the country, and are offering $20,000! in prize money to the best teams to respond to the prompt around the theme of Trusted AI In Banking.
The competition is open to any graduate level student. Students with an entrepreneurial spirit are especially encouraged to apply! Teams of three or four students can register at the link below through September 20, 2025.
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7th Annual CSL Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum!
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| Evening of Entrepreneurship: Sustaining the Resilience
of Innovation
Date: Wednesday, October 29
Time: 4-7 PM | PST
Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley warmly invites you to our signature Evening of Entrepreneurship, this year themed “Sustaining the Resilience of Innovation.”
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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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|  9/16
REGISTER
Business Model Canvas, A Practical Guide (Craig Markovitz, CMU Swartz Center, EIR)
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REGISTER
Understanding the Customer and Creating a USP (Robert Blattberg, CMU Professor of Marketing)
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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 find out more about each of the Clubs!
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The CMU T&E has a jobs board, available for people across the community to share and seek new opportunities in the startup and 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.
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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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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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