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| CORE SWARTZ CENTER EVENTS, PROGRAM DEADLINES & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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The Swartz Center Announces VentureBridge ’26 Cohort and Launches Inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program
The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship is excited to announce the VentureBridge (VB) ’26 cohort and the launch of the inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program.
Following a highly competitive application process, 14 startups were selected to receive funding and participate in VentureBridge, Carnegie Mellon University's flagship pre-seed fund and accelerator. The cohort includes founders from across the CMU community building companies in AI, robotics, healthcare, cybersecurity, semiconductors, energy, advanced manufacturing, and enterprise software.
The program kicked off in San Francisco, where founders spent three days learning from experienced entrepreneurs, operators, and investors on customer discovery, hiring, fundraising, sales, and the realities of building companies. Speakers included Scott Dietzen, Kahini Shah, Jon Chu, Michael Donohue, Nafis Jamal, Mike Shin, Sahil Shah, Miranda Nover, Saurabh Misra, and Zachary Sussman, who shared candid lessons from building, scaling, and investing in technology companies.
The cohort also spent nearly half a day with CMU Trustee Lane Bess, who shared lessons from decades of leadership experience and led a candid discussion on culture, scaling teams, and what it takes to build enduring organizations.
The announcement also follows a successful VentureBridge Demo Day during New York Tech Week, where 21 Carnegie Mellon startups pitched to investors and ecosystem leaders from across the country. The event featured keynote conversations with Todd Olson, Co-Founder and CEO of Pendo, and Sankalp Arora, Co-Founder and CEO of Gather AI (VB '18) whose journey from CMU researcher to founder highlights the impact of translating breakthrough research into venture-scale companies.
This year also marks the launch of the inaugural VentureBridge Fellows Program, a new initiative supporting a select group of high-potential CMU founders and researchers. The program includes VentureBridge Fellows, a track for student and alumni founders building startups, and VentureBridge Research Fellows, a track for faculty members, PhD students, and researchers exploring the commercialization of emerging technologies and research innovations.
VentureBridge companies and Fellows also gain access to one of the most comprehensive startup benefits packages available to university founders through partnerships with leading technology, legal, and financial organizations, including AWS, Braintrust, Carta, Cloudexe, Dentons, DocSend, Fidelity Private Shares, FinStrat Management, Framer, Google for Startups Cloud, HubSpot, J.P. Morgan Startup Banking, Microsoft for Startups, Nebius, Notion, NVIDIA Inception, OpenAI, Pillsbury, Puzzle, PwC, Rho, Rippling, Roboflow, Snowflake, Vanta, Vouch, ApertureData, Passionfruit, Reveal AI, and Trainwell.
Together, the VentureBridge ’26 cohort represents the breadth of entrepreneurship taking place across Carnegie Mellon University and its global alumni community.
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|  | Demo Day Keynote featuring Todd Olson, Co-Founder & CEO, Pendo with Meredith Meyer Grelli, CMU Swartz Center
| |  | Demo Day Keynote with Sankalp Arora, Co-Founder & CEO, Gather AI with Chris Lytle, Co-Founder, Smith Point Capital
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|  | Fireside talk with David Coulter, Chair of CMU's Board of Trustees and Meredith Meyer Grelli, Interim Executive Director and Managing Director, Swartz Center
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CMU Deep Tech Venture-Ready Program Reaches Major Milestone in New York
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Some of the world's most important innovations begin in university labs. Turning those innovations into successful companies, however, requires a very different set of skills. Carnegie Mellon University's Deep Tech Venture-Ready (DTVR) program was created to help faculty founders, PhD students, researchers, and deep-tech entrepreneurs navigate that journey through six months of investor-led education, mentorship, investor engagement, and non-dilutive funding opportunities.
The program recently celebrated a major milestone in New York City with its Mock Investment Committee, where ten selected teams had the unique opportunity to observe how investors evaluate startups behind closed doors. Twenty-six investors participated as Deal Leads and Mock IC members, bringing perspectives from leading venture firms and financial institutions. Participants included David Coulter (Warburg Pincus), Nhi Lê (Alpha Intelligence Capital), Uday Sandhu (Alpha Intelligence Capital), Felipe Mejia (Ardent Venture Partners), Phil Bronner (Ardent Venture Partners), Grace Dai (Bessemer Venture Partners), Emily Yu (Boost VC), Mark Martin (Cybernetix), Victoria Grace (Colle Capital), Charles Kennedy (Carnegie Mellon University), Joseph Botsch (Deviation Capital / Two Sigma Ventures), Justin Krauss (J.P. Morgan), Sohail Khalid (Lightscape Partners), Adit Arora (Lightscape), Sumay Parikh (NVIDIA), Kahini Shah (Obvious Ventures), Harris Stolzenberg (Pear VC), Jonathan Betz (Plaid Matrix), Chris Lytle (Smith Point Capital), Sewon Park (Smith Point Capital), Arian Agrawal (South Park Commons), Andrew Gollach (SOSV), Jay Kapoor (VSC Ventures), Jyotika Gupta (z21 Ventures), Shachi Shah (z21 Ventures), and Mark Zhu (Zenture Capital).
The New York program concluded with a fireside conversation featuring David Coulter, Chair of Carnegie Mellon University's Board of Trustees, and Meredith Grelli, Managing Director and Interim Executive Director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. Drawing on decades of leadership across finance, technology, and higher education, David Coulter shared reflections on innovation and Carnegie Mellon's role in shaping the future.
As the program enters its mentorship phase, participating teams will be paired with experienced investors for 18 months of one-on-one guidance. Approximately five to seven teams will ultimately receive non-dilutive funding awards.
Special thanks to our partners at Pillsbury, J.P. Morgan, and the Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Association for their support in making the Swartz Center's flagship annual New York event possible.
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Appy for the Fall 2026 CSL Project Course and CSL Fellows Program by August 1!
Applications for the CSL Project Course and CSL Fellows for the Fall 2026 are now open! Click the links below to learn more about each program and apply! CSL programs are offered to all Carnegie Mellon University Graduate Students (Project Course is restricted to Pittsburgh campus students).
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The CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship and Project Olympus Announce the 2026-27 Innovation Commercialization Fellows
The CMU Swartz Center and Project Olympus are excited to announce the 2026-2027 cohort of Innovation Commercialization Fellows (ICF's).
The Innovation Commercialization Fellows is a yearlong program aimed at accelerating the process of commercializing university research. The program fosters entrepreneurship among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research personnel who work directly with faculty investigators to conduct scientific experiments, solve problems and innovate. Fellows are awarded $50K in funding and participate in dedicated workshops and intensive mentoring to pursue their startup idea. Since 2015 the program has awarded 62 fellowships, including this year's cohort.
The new cohort of ICF's is listed below (in order of the above image):
Bashu Aman, Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Shreya Bali, Ph.D. Candidate, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Dhruv Bhattaram, Ph.D. Candidate, Biomedical Engineering
Julie Downs, Professor of Psychology and Decision Science
Anurag Ghosh, Ph.D. Candidate, Robotics Institute
Rajdeep (Ron) Sarma, Ph.D. Candidate, Chemistry
Jonathan Shulgach, Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
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Abridge Developing Healthcare AI Foundation Model
with Nvidia
Abridge, a locally founded med-tech startup that has grown across the country, is developing a healthcare focused AI foundation model with Nvidia. The company, co-founded by CMU alumnus and CEO Shiv Rao, CEO, was founded in 2018 by a team bringing together medical, academic, and technical expertise from the Pittsburgh healthcare ecosystem
The startup initially launched as an ambient listening tool for doctors that would record and then transcribe conversations with patients. Over time it has expanded its offerings to contextualize those conversations. Now, Abridge is developing a new model built off of Nvidia's Nemotron suite of models, which a release states will be designed to reason "from its foundation." The model will be offered exclusively though Abridge's platform.
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Addy AI Officially Integrates with MeridianLink Mortgage
Addy AI, a VentureBridge cohort participant founded by CEO Michael Vandi, has announced its official partnership with MeridianLink Mortgage, bringing together MeridianLink's leading mortgage platform and Addy AI's powerful AI automation technology. This integration will make it easier than ever for lenders to streamline operations, eliminate manual work and accelerate the loan process.
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CMU Hosts Robotics, AI and Autonomy Forum at Its Robotics Innovation Center
A number of stakeholders pitched Pittsburgh as a developmental defense tech hub to visiting crowds at Carnegie Mellon University's recently opened Robotics Innovation Center this week.
The Robotics, AI and Autonomy Forum was largely the chance for the Army AI Integration Center, a longstanding partner of CMU, to showcase and discuss the increasing use of robotics and artificial intelligence by the military, and to identify critical needs. The Army AI Integration Center's national headquarters is in Bakery Square, and the region is home to a number of startups working with the Department of War through Small Business Innovation Research contracts.
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STARTUP JOB OPPORTUNITIES
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Medmiro (AlphaLab Health '26) is seeking a highly motivated Product Design Engineer Intern for the Summer. Medmiro is building a platform technology to modernize how surgical tubes are secured and managed across multiple clinical applications.
The lead product is a securement device for feeding tubes designed to reduce accidental dislodgement, improve patient safety and simplify routine care. Medmiro is also developing a next-generation product platform that extends this core technology to a broader range of surgical tubes and catheter applications.
Tepper School of Business MBA and 2025-27 Swartz Fellow Rachel Hagani is the first employee at Medmiro, working on business development.
Interested students can visit this link (CMU Handshake) to learn more and apply! Send questions to rhagani@tepper.cmu.edu.
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| The New AI Scaling Axis: Neuro-Inspired Test-Time Cognition
Date: Friday, June 26
Time: 3-5 PM PST
Location: San Francisco, CA
Join the team at Voaige, a 2022 VentureBridge cohort participant, for a tech session during Deep Tech Week. This event will go deep into the science and engineering of neuro-inspired compute. This is for engineers, researchers, VCs and anyone building agents and thinking seriously about where AI compute scales next. Attendees will learn how to move beyond bigger models, fine-tuning and agent harness engineering.
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OTHER APPLICATION DEADLINES
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| CMU Community!
Apply To Drive's Fall 2026 Accelerator Cohort By June 26
Twice a year, Drive accelerates 10 groundbreaking scientists or early-stage startups by connecting them with life sciences business curriculum, mentorship, industry connections and visibility opportunities during an 8-week program. The CMU community is invited to apply to this hybrid program. Curriculum and mentoring meetings are virtual, while networking events and Demo Days in Boston and Charleston take place in person. Since launching in 2022, Drive has accelerated 70 companies.
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Apply for the AlphaLab '27 Cohort by July 17!
AlphaLab is now accepting applications for AL27. AlphaLab is a six-month on-site accelerator based in Pittsburgh that invests $100K as an uncapped convertible note in early-stage startups across software, hardware, health, and robotics. The program provides hands-on mentorship, deep connections to investors, customers, and talent, and a built-in network of 300+ alumni
companies that have raised more than $1.3 billion in follow-on funding.
The AL27 application is open to early-stage startups that are incorporated in the U.S. and ready to commit to spending significant time in Pittsburgh during the program. Applications are free and reviewed on a rolling basis.
Schedule office hours or apply at alphalab.org/apply.
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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/START SMART Legal Seminars will resume in the
Fall 2026 semester.
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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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