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| CORE SWARTZ CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & PROGRAM DEADLINES
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| Powering the Future of Sport:
A Draft WeekShowcase on April 22
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| The Swartz Center will host a $1.55M national pitch competition during the NFL Draft week in partnership with the NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers and AI Strike Team. “Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase and Pitch Competition,” will highlight startups at the intersection of sports and tech on Wednesday, April 22 at the new Carnegie Mellon Robotics Innovation Center.
A panel of high profile judges, including Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor; Ed Stack, Chairman of Dick's Sporting Goods and Foot Locker; Will Allen, former Pittsburgh Steeler and Partner at Magarac Venture Partners; Troy Demmer, co-founder and General Parter of First Order Fund and Deap Ubhi of AWS Startups, will decide the top pitches from around the country and the world.
The prize pool is made possible through major investments including $1M in cloud compute credit from AWS for Startups and $250K in investment from Magarac Venture Partners, $250K from First Order Fund and $50K from Innovation Works.
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| Corporate Startup Lab Hosts ROAI Event, April 16
CMU’s Corporate Startup Lab is excited to invite you to the next event, ROAI on April 16, 2026 at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. Sponsored by Deloitte, this in-person event will explore how companies are translating AI investments into meaningful business outcomes. ROAI brings together leaders from industry, venture and academia to share what’s working, what’s not and what’s next.
Find out more, including the upcoming speaker announcements.
Email Sean Mawhinney, smawhinn@andrew.cmu.edu with questions.
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Special Event!
Date: Thursday, April 2
Time: 5:30-6:30 PM | EST
Robert Bollinger—CMU Industrial Design alumnus—tells the complete, unfiltered story of Bollinger Motors: founding, branding, engineering, fundraising, pivoting and manufacturing.
Join us for a ground-level look at the hard realities of building an EV company from zero—what worked, what didn't and what nobody tells you.
Organized by the CMU School of Design, Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion and the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
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| 2026-28 Undergraduate Innovation Scholars Program
Just one week left to apply!
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Zipline Snaps Up Another $200M to Fuel Its
Drone Delivery Expansion
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Zipline, a 12-year-old South San Francisco company that operates autonomous drone delivery systems for the on-demand delivery of medical supplies, food and retail items, has raised a $200M Series H round at a $7.6B post-money valuation. The deal was led by Fidelity, with Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Tiger Global and Paradigm also participating.
Zipline co-founder Ryan Oksenhorn, participated on a panel with CMU School of Computer Science Dean Martial Herbert at February's Lab to Market event in San Francisco, CA.
The next to Lab to Market event will be held on September 17, 2026 in Pittsburgh.
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|  | Ryan Oksenhorn, co-founder, Zipline presenting at Lab
to Market in February
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| CMU Founders Make CMU's Tartans on the Rise 2026
Tartans on the Rise celebrates recent alumni who are making an impact in their organizations and in their communities, across the nation and around the world through leadership, innovation and career achievements.
Several honorees are CMU founders, including:
David Ajoku, Founder and CEO, Aware.ai (ENG 2021)
Tracy Held, Entrepreneur, Writer and Filmmaker (CFA 2015)
Susana Lau, Founder and CEO, EtyaLab (ENG 2015)
Sakshi Mishra, Co-founder, Verber Studio (ENG 2015)
Antonina Simakova, Co-founder and EVP of Research, Myris Therapeutics (MCS 2015)
Serano Tannason, Co-founder, Bang Jamin (SCS 2020)
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| CMU VentureBridge Companies Named to Fast Company's List of Most Innovative Companies for 2026!
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Gather AI (VentureBridge '18), co-founded by Sankalp Arora, CEO, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, was recently named to Fast Company's 'Most Innovative Companies of 2026' in the Logistics category.
Warehouses run the global economy, yet for decades operators have been making critical decisions without a clear view of what’s actually happening on the floor. We built Gather AI to change that - bringing real-time, reliable data into physical operations and turning it into action.
This recognition reflects the scale of that shift and the team and customers driving it forward.
Over the past year, we’ve doubled our operational footprint, grown bookings 250%, and raised a $40M Series B to expand globally. Still early, but the direction is clear.
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| Focal (VentureBridge '22), co-founded by Raj Tilwa and Rohan Pandya, was also named to Fast Company’s list of the Most Innovative Companies of 2026. Focal is built on a simple but radical premise: the era of conditioning spaces is over. The future of comfort is personal.
By embedding purpose-built robotics and AI directly into climate infrastructure, we are delivering a first-of-its-kind platform for personal comfort while setting a new standard for energy efficiency. Every individual now has control over their own comfort. A robot that is solving a real problem today, at commercial scale.
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|  | First place Morgenthaler Prize winner, Analogical Engines team with Alicia McGinnis and Meredith Grelli
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| Second Look: McGinnis Venture Competition Winners, Launch
of Morgenthaler Prize
The Swartz Center hosted the final round and awards ceremony of the annual McGinnis Venture Competition on March 17. The event brought together a diverse lineup of ideas, with emerging entrepreneurs presenting their ventures across the Graduate, Undergraduate, and Social Enterprise tracks.This year also saw the establishment of the David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fund, creating a new endowed $50K annual Morgenthaler Prize.
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OTHER APPLICATION DEADLINES
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| Apply by April 21!
Apply for this summer’s Patient Safety Fellowship, focused on advancing the blueprint for an Ambition Health System—an ideal yet feasible health system that prevents harm before it occurs.
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STARTUP JOB OPPORTUNITIES
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| Jackson Square Ventures Summer Launchpad Program's 'Provenance' Seeks to Hire Design Co-founder from
Carnegie Mellon University
Provenance is building the infrastructure layer for financial models. It automatically tracks, explains and verifies every change inside Excel, so teams can understand how models evolve and collaborate without version chaos. Provenance is currently working with early-design partners across investment banking and private equity.
The company is hiring a founding product designer with deep UX experience to help shape the product from the ground up. Interested candidates can send an email to uskudar@provenancexl.com.
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| CONNECTS/START SMART LEGAL 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!
The CONNECTS Seminars will resume in the Fall 2026 semester.
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**SPRING 2026 START SMART LEGAL SERIES (Virtual)**
ALL virtual sessions held at 5-6:15 PM | ET
April 7,2026!
How to Structure Your Capital Raise | Part 2 Workshop
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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 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.
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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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