"Own a home. Work in tech. Move to Pittsburgh."
This playful recruiting message showed up on a billboard along San Francisco's US Highway 101 in 2018 courtesy of Duolingo, the Pittsburgh-based learning language platform that was pitching Silicon Valley workers to move east for a better and more affordable quality of life.
Start-ups like Duolingo and tech giants like Google, Apple, IBM, and Uber have consistently grown their corporate and research presence in Pittsburgh, citing the city's research universities, commitment to innovation, and affordability. Heinz College students and alumni benefit from this new tech ecosystem, with countless employment and educational opportunities during their university studies and beyond. And students with an entrepreneurial spirit are finding it easier to start and grow their own companies in this climate.
It's no wonder, then, that GeekWire recently identified Pittsburgh as the "next great tech hub." With the support of local startup accelerators and incubators like AlphaLab, Ascender, and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Heinz alumni are turning entrepreneurial ideas into profitable realities in fields ranging from health care and robotics to food preservation and agriculture.
Future. Forged. For all.
We are dreamers, thinkers, makers and problem solvers. We always have been. We are not afraid of redefining ourselves. Or the world. See how Pittsburgh is using technology to forge the future.
Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
“The reason Pittsburgh now gets mentioned alongside Brooklyn and Portland as an urban hot spot for millennials isn’t chefs or artists but geeks.” - Steven Kurutz, The New York Times
The Google Effect
Attracting creative minds from all over the world, Google has grown steadily since opening an office here in 2006.
The World's Autonomous Vehicle Capital
Aurora recently adopted Pittsburgh as its sole corporate headquarters, and Uber and Argo AI chose Pittsburgh as their pilot city for dispatching fleets of self-driving cars.
412 Food Rescue Mobilizes Volunteers
Heinz College alumna Leah Lizarondo (MSPPM ‘03) recently developed an Uber-like app that is helping to save half a million pounds of food from being wasted each year. Find out how.