The Monthly Beat

A recap of the most interesting news from October 2023, plus some extras for the months ahead.

Good morning everyone!

Now that spooky season is behind us, I’m counting down the days till I can eat a ridiculous amount of stuffing and mashed potatoes (the two best Thanksgiving sides, don’t @ me) and counting up the things that happened in Pittsburgh’s tech scene last month. This month was chock full of news, so let’s take a look at what’s been up.

All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh unless otherwise noted.

Here’s what happened in October:

According to the Feds, Pittsburgh is apparently not a “tech hub.” The US Economic Development Administration selected 31 areas for technology funding, and Pittsburgh was not one of them. Boooooooooooooo!

• PNC started layoffs, and said it will lay off a total of 4% of its workforce by the end of Q4. I mention this because it includes tech workers, so if you are in a position to hire, now’s a great time to give a helping hand to locals in need of a new opportunity and grow your workforce.

• Fifth Season filed for bankruptcy. I’ve previously reported on Fifth Season, a Braddock-based robotic vertical farming startup that produced over half a million pounds of vegetables on its farm for several different regional grocery stores (Giant Eagle, among them). Its original closure announcement was kind of overshadowed by the ArgoAI closure earlier this year, so sorry I missed that. It seems like they’re trying to restructure now, though, so hopefully they can get people (and robots) back to work!

• Greene County is getting broadband, so if you work remotely and have been thinking of moving out to the exurbs, you will have some more housing options south of the city by spring of next year!

• Duolingo is adding math and music educational subjects to its platform. The mindset behind these additions is that both math and music “transcend cultures and people, just like languages do.” It will be interesting to see if these new additions make as much sound in the market as its language learning tools (puns absolutely intended), especially given that Duolingo executives have sold over $10 million in stock since September.

• This next one is the last pun for this post, I swear! Train fans rejoice: U.S. Steel just introduced the first battery-powered locomotive engine in the Mon Valley. "The future of transportation is electric, and today U.S. Steel's future really is on track," punned Kurt Barshick, VP of U.S. Steel Mon Valley Works during the announcement.

• In healthcare tech, Resilient Lifescience, a biotech startup, has started in-human medical testing of opioid overdose detection devices. The device measures various health metrics, including breathing, with the end goal of automatically delivering a dose of naloxone if an overdose is detected to keep the individual alive.

• Another healthcare tech startup, Leda Health, is moving into Lawrenceville. The firm provides at-home sexual assault evidence kits, an accompanying mobile app, 24/7 care team, STI testing, and emergency contraception resources to victims of sexual assault. The main impetus for the move, according to CEO Madison Campbell, is that their previous location, Brooklyn, NY, was simply unaffordable for their employees.

• In robotics, Gecko Robotics launched an AI-driven decision making platform to be used in defense, manufacturing, and energy sectors. To be honest, this source article was full of a lot of corporate hyperbole, but the main use case they described here is that this new platform, called Cantilever, allows teams to generate and act on repair plans for hardware in a much faster way than previously possible.

• Astrobotics successfully completed four flights for University of Central Florida, collecting helpful data to inform the next manned flight to the Moon. In addition, they successfully shipped their lunar lander to Florida and are preparing for a launch on Christmas Eve. Seems like a lot of hype around the Moon lately, perhaps because of a certain spooky holiday?

• COhatch, a Midwest-based coworking space chain, opened a new location in the Southside Works. The opening event was a Halloween party complete with full bar service and costumes. The space’s private offices are 60% full at the time of this writing, so if you’re looking for a new place to work that isn’t your house, it may be worth checking out!

• In more spooky news, Deeplocal made an AI-based Ouija board that “summons” a character and spells out things aligned with its personality based on a user’s audio input. The company has a demo video on their Instagram profile if you want to see it in action.

• Stack AV has now hired 150 workers and an entire fleet of trucks for testing its new autonomous trucking platform. That’s a pretty quick turnaround after formally launching the company, so they must have had this cooking in the background for a while. Also, I came to the realization this weekend that SoftBank, a Japanese financial firm that is Stack AV’s primary source of funding, is also the same firm that lost billions in the WeWork fiasco. Let’s hope this investment proves more fruitful than the previous one.

• Near Earth Autonomy, a UAV tech company based in Homewood, has landed a contract with the US Army to demonstrate an unmanned aerial resupply system that can deliver up to 800lb loads to locations over 100 miles away. The price of the contract remains undisclosed, but involves the integration of Near Earth’s software platform into new heavy-lift vertical takeoff and landing UAVs.

• In the world of old school Pittsburgh tech companies, Westinghouse is moving to Etna to develop a transportable nuclear battery. They just signed a lease for a 87,420-square-foot building and will be hiring for at least 40 new jobs at the location. The battery, dubbed “the eVinci microreactor,” will be capable of providing 5 megawatts of electricity every day for 8+ years without additional nuclear fuel. Wild.

• Wrapping up this post with some good reads on locally developed tech products that were published this past month. NEXTPittsburgh profiled Luca.AI, an AI-based learning system to assist dyslexic students. As with most of these posts, I had no idea anyone was doing something like this locally beforehand. It seems like an awesome product, and the piece is definitely worth a read.

• Lastly, Technical.ly interviewed folks from OtterTune, a local database performance optimization startup. The interview describes how the company’s used their $12 million Series A investment round this year to improve their product, and is also worth a read if you have any interest in Postgres.

For the months 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 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, and have a great rest of your Sunday!

—Austin