The Monthly Beat
A recap of the most interesting news from January 2024, plus some extras for the months ahead.
Good morning! I hope you had a great January. 2024 is off to a great start for Pittsburgh tech, so let’s take a look at what’s cooking.
All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh, unless otherwise noted.
Here’s what happened in January:
Astrobotic’s lander made national news as it malfunctioned and burned up. Before this catastrophe, there was quite a lot of hype locally. Canonsburg-based Ansys announced that their technology was used in the design of the lander, and multiple local and national outlets reported on the launch. Fortunately, the overall mission wasn’t a complete failure—the rocket also carried a payload of people’s ashes that were to be jettisoned into space. And now, the lander’s ashes join them. RIP.
Ansys was acquired by Silicon Valley company Synopsys. This seems to have been a controversial move internally, as Ansys recently posted slower revenue growth. I wonder what they’re thinking now after the lander situation. Hopefully, their new partnership with NVIDIA for simulating autonomous vehicles will be more fruitful.
Speaking of autonomous vehicles, Aurora laid off 3% of their workforce. This came shortly after their announcement that, in partnership with trucking company Continental, they have finalized the hardware design and architecture for the mass-produced version of the Aurora Driver, the company’s flagship self-driving system. Continental plans to start production of the hardware in 2027, so given we are still a few years off from seeing wide use of the Driver, it makes sense that Aurora would look to cut costs through layoffs. (Side note: if you were affected by these layoffs, I want to hear your perspective! Please reach out on LinkedIn.)
Several Pittsburgh tech companies presented at the Consumer Electronics Show, including VeloAI, which completely sold out of its first batch of the Copilot. In case you missed it, the Copilot is a safety device consisting of a smart sensor, camera, and light combo that cyclists can attach to their bikes for audio alerts and reactive tail light patterns based on the user’s surroundings. Because of this early success, the company is now considering raising up to $3 million this year to expand their workforce and, thus, their ability to produce more of this nifty product.
CMU announced that it experienced a security breach last August that leaked the personal information of 7,300 people. The week this was announced was data privacy week, ironically. The university is offering free credit monitoring to victims, at least.
Finally, on a more fun note, Lucas Systems published a study showing that warehouse workers prefer gamified workplaces. The company plans to use these findings in the development of its warehouse automation systems. In my opinion, all workplaces should be gamified! Everyday tasks would be so much more enjoyable if I got some sort of in-game currency for doing them—or is that just what my salary is?
For the months ahead:
PyCon US will be in Pittsburgh, May 15–23. There will be tons of talks, tutorials, job opportunities, and more for Python programming language users at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Register here. I’ll be there!
I’m looking for guest writers and guest podcasters! 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 it somewhere else as well.
Thanks so much for reading. Hope you have a great week!
—Austin