Riverfront Ventures leverages local capital and the resources of Innovation Works to make equity investments in the Pittsburgh region’s fastest-growing tech companies. Our anchor in the local early stage startup community enables us to work with founders from inception to exit, with the goal of showcasing the prowess of Pittsburgh entrepreneurs.
IW is the largest seed-stag investor in the region, and is a hub for founders at every phase of the startup cycle.
Riverfront Ventures is a for-profit subsidiary of Innovation Works, enabling us to take advantage of the network, resources and in-house expertise of all of our programs there. Innovation Works and its accelerators have been a launch pad for multiple Riverfront portfolio companies. Together, we provide Pittsburgh companies with the opportunity to grow from inception to lucrative exits that will continue to fuel the entrepreneurship ecosystem here.
To invest in Pittsburgh tech startups beyond the seed stage, and in turn, support the continued growth of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Pittsburgh is one of the top emerging startup ecosystems in the world. The over 500 startups located here have an estimated total value of more than $35.6 billion. In 2022, local tech firms attracted approximately $1.03 billion in investment across 176 deals.
The region’s growing success in fostering entrepreneurship is attributed to the top-tier technical talent and research cluster here. From institutions like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh to healthcare leaders like Highmark Health and UPMC, the city is a hotbed for innovation, yielding a number of successful exits including Duolingo’s massive IPO.
Here, we grow companies across all sectors. CMU is the number one artificial intelligence school in the country. Pitt was in the top three recipients of NIH funding in 2022. The U.S. Economic Development Administration gave Pittsburgh entrepreneurship organizations over $62 million through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge to support and grow the city’s robotics and autonomy cluster.
In recent years, our regional investment data has started to reflect that diversity of expertise.
