New funding shows the future of work in Pittsburgh could mean more flexibility for employees, greater use of AI and stronger bonds between striking workers.
What does that look like in practice? Well, workforce management startup Conduit was awarded $375,000 to expand its scheduling platform, Duolingo beat revenue expectations despite backlash over AI and New York Times tech workers made a giant donation to support striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff.
Check the local tech hiring trends below, then read on for the latest on these major money moves.
Workforce management platform wins $375,000 to cut turnover
Turnover rates present a serious problem for service industries, and scheduling is one of the biggest contributors to burnout and attrition. That’s according to Conduit, which just got $375,000 to expand its AI-powered solution.
The Pittsburgh startup’s platform aims to fix this problem by allowing workers to more actively participate in the scheduling process.
Conduit’s platform gathers employees’ weekly shift preferences and automates swaps and call-off coverage to reduce scheduling disruptions. It also serves as a career co-pilot for workers, offering them personalized learning paths, training resources and skill-building tools. Conduit says a regional food retailer using the platform saw schedule satisfaction rise by 50% and turnover drop by 25% in three months.
Conduit will use its new funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to integrate with platforms like Square and Gusto, add career and training program mapping, refine skills development tools and grow its team. Conduit primarily works with food service and retail businesses currently, but the startup plans to expand its partnerships within industries like manufacturing, healthcare and green energy.
“There’s too much friction and frustration between workers, who seek more self-determination, and their managers, who genuinely want to support their teams but are stretched thin by outdated tools and limited time,” said CEO and cofounder Max Holmes. “Conduit is designed from the ground up to bridge that gap, giving workers more input into their experience at work while saving managers critical time currently being spent on burdensome administrative tasks.”
Duolingo acknowledges ‘AI first’ backlash, but revenue keeps growing
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said recent backlash over his “AI first” comments hasn’t hurt the company’s financial performance.
Earlier this year, Ahn announced via a memo that the company would gradually replace contractors with AI for tasks that can be automated, as part of its shift to become more “AI-first.”
The company later tried to add more context to the statement, but public sentiment had already shifted, as evidenced by social media.
@nirami1 oh Duolingo #duolingo #ai ♬ original sound – SAINTED
Possibly as a result, Duolingo’s monthly active users declined by about two million from Q1 to Q2. However, the app’s daily active users grew about 1.1 million from the first to the second quarter, and the company reported $252.3 million in Q2 revenue, up 41% from the same time last year. The news boosted Duolingo’s stock by nearly 30%.
“We exceeded our own high expectations for bookings and revenue this quarter, and did it while expanding profitability,” said Ahn in a prepared statement. “Engagement remained strong, and we’ve seen encouraging early signals from new product initiatives like our Energy mechanic and Chess course.”
NYT tech workers donate $114,000 to Pittsburgh strikers
The New York Times Tech Guild is backing Pittsburgh workers who are now on the longest-running strike in the country.
At the 2025 NewsGuild Sector Conference downtown, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh thanked the NYT tech workers for donating $114,000 to the striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff.
The money came from funds the tech workers had raised during their own November strike. After securing a contract, they had a substantial amount left over — money that arrived just as the Post-Gazette strike fund needed a boost, according to the strike publication Pittsburgh Union Progress.
“Once they won their strike and took care of their own members, they had a very substantial amount of money left, about $114,000,” Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh President Zack Tanner told the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “Those Times Tech Guild workers voted together to forward that to our Pittsburgh strike fund, and I’m not exaggerating when I say we would not be standing here on strike if it wasn’t for that donation.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers have been on strike since October 2022, making it currently the longest strike in the nation.
The NYT Tech Guild did not immediately respond to Technical.ly’s request to comment.
Other money moves:
- Local biopharmaceutical company Coeptis Therapeutics has raised $4 million of a planned $5 million offering, according to an Aug. 7 SEC filing.
- Pittsburgh-based Ultron AI, a startup offering AI products for the retail industry, has raised $1.3 million of a planned $2 million offering, according to an Aug. 8 SEC filing.
- Health tech startup Korion Health was awarded a $25,000 Innovation Works Scalable Grant to manufacture its first 50 stethoscopes in partnership with local businesses.
- Journey Robotics received $250,000 from Innovation Works to expand testing of its robotic baggage handling system at the Pittsburgh International Airport.
- Tech startup CorePower Magnetics plans to open a new steel-manufacturing facility in Pittsburgh with help from a $500,000 investment from the RK Mellon Foundation.
- Plexision, a Bloomfield-based biotech company, received a $365,000 investment from the Richard King Mellon Foundation to integrate AI and machine learning into its cell-based blood tests, which aim to improve predictive accuracy of complex transplants.
- The NSF pledged $6.6 million to Carnegie Mellon University’s new Institute for Computer-Aided Reasoning in Mathematics, which will use AI to more quickly solve pressing mathematical questions.
- Six researchers from the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering won $70,000 to conduct research as part of the 2025 Manufacturing PA Innovation Award. Since the program launched in 2018, Pitt has received more than $2.2 million in total award funding.
- Premier Automation, a Monroeville engineering firm, launched a new facility in Westmoreland County with $3 million in financial support from the PA Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED).
- DCED also gave the Quaker Valley School District in Allegheny County a $184,012 Manufacturing PA Training-to-Career grant to build a new manufacturing and fabrication lab and develop workforce courses.
- Innovation Works says it supported 116 startups and helped drive $677 million in portfolio revenue in its 2024 Community Impact Report.
- Synopsys finally completed its $35 billion acquisition of Cannonsburg-based Ansys, after more than a year checking all the legal boxes.
- Duquesne University is expanding its presence in Uptown by purchasing 12 parcels of land for nearly $3.7 million.
Software company Smith Micro raised $1.5 million through a following-on offering.
