PITTSBURGH, PA (November 1, 2022) - Carnegie Foundry, a robotics and AI venture studio headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA that seeds, launches and grows autonomous robotics and AI start-ups, announced that Mr. Richard Fruehauf, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer for U.S. Steel Corporation and Ms. Jay Iyengar, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology and Strategic Sourcing Officer at Oshkosh Corporation, will join its Board of Directors effective immediately. Carnegie Foundry, after receiving investment from U.S. Steel and Oshkosh, has achieved several milestones in recent months, culminating in Fruehauf and Iyengar’s addition to the Board.
“We are thrilled to have Richard and Jay join us in pushing ahead on our ambitious goals to accelerate autonomy and robotics innovation for Industry,” said Carnegie Foundry CEO Dr. Robert J. Szczerba. “Our respective goals are complementary, and we have a shared mindset for how best to direct capital, resources, and energy to be the driving force behind seeding new ventures in this very specialized category of industrial innovation.”
Among those complementary goals is bringing a fresh model to the existing venture ecosystem for industry. By providing critical seed capital for its own specialized spinoffs - capital that is otherwise very hard to find from most seed and early-stage venture funds – Carnegie Foundry can fill the innovation pipeline for industrials more effectively. Chief Strategy Officer Michael Lutzky explained, “Our goal is to address a market failure we’ve observed launching hardware-heavy, industrial focused startups that large, leading companies can avail themselves to. Many traditional seed and early-stage investors are not aligned to support what an industrial robotics company needs to launch, get to market, and deliver revenue. The check sizes needed are too large and the equity is too small for their respective, software focused theses. Thus, the innovation pipeline for US industrial automation is thinner than we think it can and should be. By launching and seeding these companies, with the likes of U.S. Steel and Oshkosh at our side, Carnegie Foundry is addressing that critical gap.”
At U.S. Steel, Mr. Fruehauf is responsible for creating and driving U. S. Steel's strategy and sustainability priorities to achieve profitable growth. He also has responsibility for developing policy and methods that will support U. S. Steel's future by aligning business sustainability and organization opportunities as well as having executive responsibility for Strategic Planning and Business Development, and Government Affairs. He also serves as Chair of the U. S. Steel Foundation.
Ms. Iyengar has over 30 years of diverse industry experience across the automotive, aerospace, diversified industrial, agricultural, and heavy-duty vehicle markets. Upon her joining Oshkosh in January 2022, Ms. Iyengar has responsibility for the vision and strategy that will drive investment, development, and deployment of leading-edge technologies. She is also responsible for global strategic sourcing activities focused on building a supply chain capable of delivering next generation technologies.
Carnegie Foundry, through its relationship with the world leader in autonomous robotics - the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University – combines expertise from decades of applied R&D work in autonomy with highly strategic, corporate venture capital partners like U.S. Steel and Oshkosh.
“The Carnegie Foundry team has a unique combination of technology minded business leaders and engineering talent with outstanding expertise in autonomy and we are excited to work together,” said Rich Fruehauf. This highly specialized expertise and unique business model means Carnegie Foundry can bring multi-use technology solutions to market better, faster and cheaper- minimizing the engineering risks, long lead times and high burn rates that are the most common points of failure for other companies in this sector.
“The capabilities and technology – and thus the opportunities to pursue - are vast. We are looking forward to working with the Carnegie Foundry team to quickly commercialize these innovations and bring them to market,” said Jay Iyengar. Carnegie Foundry is currently focused on commercializing and scaling its portfolio of robotics and AI technologies in advanced manufacturing, mobility, automated warehouses, supply chains, industrial robotics, voice analytics and more. It recently launched two companies; VoxEQ offers world class and proprietary artificial intelligence tools to understand the person behind the voice – and their state - to reduce operator fatigue and impairment and reduce revenue losses, reputational risk and fraud. The other, Freespace Robotics, is a next generation robotic and AI driven automated storage and retrieval system for warehousing and ecommerce fulfillment. Carnegie Foundry and its seed funded spin-offs have open funding rounds.
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About Carnegie Foundry
Carnegie Foundry is a unique Robotics and AI venture studio, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. In partnership with the world leader in autonomous robotics and AI - the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University – we develop, mature and commercialize cutting-edge intellectual property and advanced prototypes, already market tested and primed for new and expanded applications. For more information visit carnegiefoundry.com.
About United States Steel Corporation
Founded in 1901, United States Steel Corporation is a leading steel producer. With an unwavering focus on safety, the company’s customer-centric Best for All℠ strategy is advancing a more secure, sustainable future for U. S. Steel and its stakeholders. With a renewed emphasis on innovation, U. S. Steel serves the automotive, construction, appliance, energy, containers, and packaging industries with high value-added steel products such as U. S. Steel’s proprietary XG3™ advanced high-strength steel. The company also maintains competitively advantaged iron ore production and has an annual raw steelmaking capability of 26.2 million net tons. U. S. Steel is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with world-class operations across the United States and in Central Europe. For more information, please visit www.ussteel.com.
About Oshkosh Corporation
At Oshkosh (NYSE: OSK), we make innovative, mission-critical equipment to help everyday heroes advance communities around the world. Headquartered in Wisconsin, Oshkosh Corporation employs more than 14,000 team members worldwide, all united behind a common cause: to make a difference in people’s lives. Oshkosh products can be found in more than 150 countries under the brands of JLG®, Pierce®, Oshkosh® Defense, McNeilus®, IMT®, Jerr-Dan®, Frontline™, Oshkosh® Airport Products, London™ and Pratt Miller. For more information, visit oshkoshcorp.com.