Carnegie Mellon University and Innovation Works, a North Side-based seed-stage investment firm, hosted the fifth annual AI & Robotics Venture Fair on Monday at the Fairmont Pittsburgh downtown.
The event, which drew an in-person attendance of nearly 250 investors, roboticists, technologists and others with ties to the region's startup community, offered local founders the opportunity to pitch their budding companies to a captive audience, an audience that could be receptive to offering future investment opportunities to help these companies scale to their next level.
A total of 20 presenting startups participated in this year's fair, which included Allvision IO, BlastPoint, Bloomfield Robotics and Thoro.AI, among others. The selection committee, a group of 11 individuals with ties to the region's startup community, picked the 20 startups that partook in this year's fair.
Kit Needham, assistant dean for entrepreneurship initiatives at CMU and the associate director of Project Olympus, gave the opening remarks at the event, which spanned over two hours.
"It's our job, along with my colleague Reed McManigle, to help (these founders) explore the commercial potential of their innovations and research," Needham said. "We work with them in the very, very early stage, trying to help them find product-market-fit and a feasible business model."
When CMU is successful in doing that, Needham said that the next stage is to push these founders out to the community, with IW being one of the first places it turns to for such work. She noted the three nationally-ranked accelerator programs IW offers — AlphaLab for software startups, AlphaLab Gear for hardware startups and AlphaLab Health for health sciences-related startups — and that several startup companies out of CMU have gone on to scale or be acquired as a result of these accelerators, turning a handsome return on investment for early-stage investors in the process of doing so.
But it's not just about money, Needham said.
"It's about resources, it's about having the ability to reach out and ask for special help, to create new ways of doing things," Needham said. "IW has been a wonderful partner."
Rich Lunak, president and CEO of IW, shared a similar exchange of praise for CMU in his brief remarks during the event's opening address period.
"Kit talked about Innovation Works but I have to give a strong shout-out to Carnegie Mellon University; I think they're the entity that really legitimizes Pittsburgh in the AI and robotics sector," Lunak said. "With that, they are such a complementary partner to Innovation Works, both with the academic research and entrepreneurship and creating such a real rich deal flow to seed and early stage investors like Innovation Works and their team has been terrific to work with over the last five years and beyond."
All of this year's presenting companies at the AI & Robotics Venture Fair are available to read online.
