AI Robotics Firm Picks Pittsburgh for $2B Expansion

Before Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Innovation Center even celebrates its grand opening this Friday, it's already putting Pittsburgh on the map for cutting-edge robotics innovation.

California-based FieldAI, valued at around $2 billion, chose the Steel City for its newest lab and office space inside the 150,000-square-foot facility. The company develops AI software that gives machines the ability to work autonomously in places too dangerous or tedious for humans.

The technology sounds like science fiction but solves real problems. Dog-like robots equipped with FieldAI brains can roam construction sites to monitor progress. The same software can guide machines through nuclear cleanup sites, keeping human workers safe from radiation exposure.

FieldAI's Pittsburgh branch will be led by Sebastian Scherer, a CMU robotics professor who joined the company about a year ago. The team will test their autonomous machines both indoors and outdoors at the new innovation center, located at Hazelwood Green where a former steel mill once stood.

The company's roots run deeper than its 2023 official launch. Its founding team spent years developing autonomous systems for a NASA cave exploration project starting in 2016, building expertise that now powers everything from side-by-side vehicles to humanoid robots.

The Ripple Effect

Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, made clear this wasn't a favor to the hometown university. "It is not a courtesy, it is a calculation," she said. FieldAI picked Pittsburgh because the talent pool, research infrastructure, and robotics ecosystem here can't be matched.

The choice sends a powerful message about Pittsburgh's transformation. The Robotics Innovation Center sits in Hazelwood Green, where the Regional Industrial Development Corp. is building a high-tech hub on land that once produced steel. CMU already operates a manufacturing and research hub nearby in Mill 19.

The University of Pittsburgh is building its own BioForge facility at the same site, where Massachusetts-based ElevateBio will begin cell and gene therapy manufacturing early next year. Both projects received major funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, betting on Pittsburgh's tech future.

Pittsburgh is proving that innovation hubs aren't limited to Silicon Valley when you combine world-class universities, talented workers, and vision for what's possible.