The Monthly Beat

A recap of the most interesting news from November 2023, plus some extras for the New Year ahead.

Good evening!

I hope you had a great November, including a Thanksgiving filled with good food and a surprising lack of family drama. Personally, I ate a slightly above-average amount of food, brewed way too much espresso with my sister-in-law’s espresso machine, and checked out a vinyl record expo outside Philly the weekend after. It was awesome. But enough about Turkey Day—let’s take a look at what happened in the Pittsburgh tech scene this past month!

All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh, unless otherwise noted. The audio version of this post will be published later this week. Sorry for the wait!

Here’s what happened in November:

• Just north of Pittsburgh, the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa was hacked by Iran. The hack stopped water from pumping at a station that regulates water pressure for two towns, forcing crews to manually intervene to maintain stability. The FBI has not revealed how they were hacked yet.

• Pittsburgh is losing one of its only robotics machine shops, RE2, which is based in Lawrenceville. The company’s new parent, Sarcos, originally planned to continue operations. It has since decided to fire everyone at the Lawrenceville shop by January 16th, 2024, and is shifting its focus to—you guessed it—AI. The linked article shares the voices of some of the workers who are losing their jobs, and I would definitely recommend a read.

• UPMC is in the midst of consolidating its patient systems into a centralized Epic system, and reviews are mixed. UPMC currently uses multiple electronic medical record systems (EMRs) in various locations of its business. Some staff are reluctant to move away from their current EMRs and are dreading the training necessary to learn the new system. However, on the tech side, I talked to one engineer who said the transition was definitely worth it and that the current state of using multiple EMRs makes it difficult to do anything innovative. I’ll be keeping tabs and reporting on this transition as it develops over the coming months.

• Gecko Robotics, a firm focused on infrastructure inspection and monitoring tech, signed a contract with the Navy to help build nuclear submarines. This seems like it’s mostly going to be a data operation, where Gecko will provide data from “digital weld inspections” that reduces the time needed for inspection during both the manufacturing process and ongoing sub maintenance. Meanwhile, they’re also helping to build the Pittsburgh airport with xBridge.

• Elsewhere in robotics, Astrobotic acquired a vacant building on the North Shore, where it plans to perform $20 million in renovations and hire 238 new employees. This includes $4 million in funding from Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration.

• Diamond Kinetics, in partnership with Marucci Sports, has successfully developed the world’s first smart baseball bat with an integrated swing tracking sensor that never needs to be charged. Bat sensors are currently banned in the MLB, so they’re starting small and trying to get the bat approved for use in NCAA and high school leagues.

• Lucas Systems, a warehouse automation startup, established a new research partnership with Carnegie Mellon University with the goal of optimizing packaging processes to reduce waste. The research will contribute to Lucas’s overall goal of building smart software that helps warehouse workers fulfill orders in the most environmentally and financially efficient way possible.

• Ansys announced a partnership with Sony to develop simulations of automotive sensors. This is on top of their new partnership with Microsoft and TSMC to develop new three-dimensional integrated circuit technology and their project to build a nuclear reactor. They’ve been busy down there in Canonsburg!

• Hazelwood Green continues to gain steam with the launch of CMU’s Extended Reality Technology Center. The center will host researchers and industry professionals who are developing extended reality tools while providing training for consumers on how to use them.

• The Pittsburgh Business Times published a great piece this month on the future of AI in Pittsburgh. The article features quotes from local tech leaders and professors from local universities.

• Duolingo posted an interesting article on how they maintain growth through a sense of urgency. The article describes how they consolidated several teams into a single unit focused on growing their daily active user count and describes the principles behind their operations. While I don’t agree with 100% of the methodology described, I nonetheless found it super insightful.

• The City of Pittsburgh launched a new digital city archive site. You can find some pretty cool stuff on here, but I’ll warn you, it’s pretty laggy.

• And finally, the Pittsburgh Technology Council published their annual Tech 50 awards. Did your company make the list?

For the New Year ahead:

• PyCon US is coming to Pittsburgh May 15–23, 2024! The conference will provide tons of talks, tutorials, job opportunities, and more for Python programming language users at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Register at the link. I’ll be there!

• I’m looking for guest writers! Do you have a local Pittsburgh tech topic you’d like to wax poetic about? Hit me up! Spoiler alert: it’s not a paid gig, but I would be more than willing to host or repost your piece if you want to publish somewhere else as well.

Thanks so much for reading. Wishing you a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a fantastic new year! See you in '24.

—Austin