It's happening! 🏈 I hope you all get a chance to walk across a yellow bridge, drink a beer and soak up all that yinzer energy this week in celebration of the NFL Draft.
Before you do that, though, let's talk money: More than half a million of cash investment was committed to AI startups at the draft showcase event yesterday.
Plus, PGH companies raised a combined $1.7 billion in Q1. Keep scrolling for the breakdown on that figure.
Image of the Day: Mayor Corey O'Connor takes a dive for a robot-thrown football at CMU's draft showcase event
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Ecosystems Map Spotlight: Illinois
Illinois has a deep bench: Chicago is a world-class metro with serious tech and corporate depth, while downstate regions contribute advanced manufacturing, logistics and agtech.
Fundamentally, the state has strong research output, mid-to-high startup rates and a dynamic labor market, but is held back by long-running fiscal challenges and uneven perceptions of business climate.Read more...
No startups walked away empty-handed on Wednesday at the Forge to Field Pitch AI Competition.
Instead of awarding one winner, the Shark Tank-style event committed investments to each startup that pitched — and even three companies that didn’t — bringing the total value committed to more than $1.8 million, over half a million more than originally advertised.
The event featured high-profile judges like former Shark Tank investor and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who said Pittsburgh is emerging as a leading hub for AI, second only to Silicon Valley.
“It’s harder to fail here than any other city,” Cuban said before the competition. Continue reading...
One deal drove most of the $1.7B raised in Q1
More than ever before, capital is being consolidated around a narrower set of perceived winners.
Companies in the Pittsburgh metro area raised a combined $1.7 billion across 26 deals in Q1.
The total raised is above average for the region, and so is the deal count, but more than 80% of the capital was concentrated in just one deal — Skild AI’s $1.4 billion raise from January.
But, if you remove Skild's deal from the region’s total Q1 VC activity, Pittsburgh startup funding still remains steady — even better than usual this quarter. The new total is approximately $300 million, a solid showing for an ecosystem that has a median total raise of roughly $124 million per quarter. Continue reading...
Maryland’s state-backed innovation engine has made early bets on companies that later became major players, offering one lens into how the state’s startup ecosystem is maturing.
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