The Monthly Beat - April '24 Edition
A recap of the most interesting news from March 2024, plus some extras for the months ahead.
Good morning! For those of you who celebrate, I hope you had a very Happy Easter filled with family, friends, and chocolate. I, for one, needed it, after this month’s top headline. Let’s get into it.
All companies mentioned are local to Pittsburgh, unless otherwise noted.
Here’s what happened in March:
Niche.com laid off 7% of their workforce, just two weeks before launching their 10th annual Best Places to Live rankings. I, fortunately, still have my day job there, but it has certainly been a very tough time.
Duolingo posted a short article on how they use dogfooding to improve their product. According to the article, “over 70% of the company are dogfooders,” which is pretty wild, but makes sense given the general practicality of language learning for adults.
Aurora hosted an Analyst and Investor Day where they showcased their self-driving truck’s ability to navigate dangerous road conditions. Here’s the presentation deck from the day, which includes links to videos demonstrating the technology. I couldn’t embed the videos here because of the privacy settings, but they’re definitely worth a peek. The one I found most compelling was the one that shows the Aurora Driver detecting a person on the shoulder of the road a full 11 seconds before they are visible to the human eye!
Astrobotic flew their reusable Xodiac rocket at night for the first time. Below is a video of the rocket if you want to see it in action. Hopefully this one is more successful than the lander earlier this year! Shortly afterward, they announced the hiring of four new space leaders, three of whom are ex-NASA.
NEXTPittsburgh published a profile on the company that makes the little cleaning robots at the PIT airport, Thoro.ai. These lil guys are super cool, and the article is a great short read!
Ansys announced that it’s now Hyundai’s preferred supplier for vehicle structural simulation technology. Hyundai tested a lot of different options for products like Ansys’s, but ultimately went with Ansys because their product outperformed the competition in accuracy and data processing. In addition, they announced that they are now more closely collaborating with NVIDIA.
Gecko Robotics made it onto Fast Company’s annual list of the Most Innovative Companies of 2024. These guys have so much momentum right now.
Speaking of momentum, according to data from Ernst & Young and Innovation Works, VC funding in Pittsburgh jumped 200% last year. I literally just listened to a Marketplace episode that highlighted how VC funding is slowing down, so it’s interesting that Pittsburgh is an outlier in this.
For the months ahead:
PyData is hosting a meetup at Code & Supply on the emerging AI regulatory landscape on April 18th at 6:30pm. Sign up to attend here for free!
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!
Local frontend dev Brad Frost is throwing Frostapalooza on August 17th, a benefit concert featuring the musical performances of several other local devs. See the full lineup and get tickets here!
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.
Annnnd that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading. I’ll have the audio versions for last month and this month posted soon, too, I promise. Sorry for the wait, and have a great Thursday!
—Austin