pittsburgh-startup
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Mark Chrystal
Dr. Mark Chrystal is the CEO and co-founder of Profitmind, a Pittsburgh-based agentic AI startup that gives retailers a team of AI analysts for pricing, inventory, assortment, forecasting and competitive intelligence. A 25-year retail operator who ran analytics, supply chain and e-commerce at rue21, David's Bridal, American Eagle, Disney Store and Victoria's Secret, he was recruited by AI pioneer Andrew Ng to build software 'for retailers by retailers.' The company, formerly known as Netail, has raised roughly $14 million to date, including a $9 million Series A backed by Accenture Ventures, with partnerships spanning Accenture and Microsoft.
Deepak Pathak
Deepak Pathak is the co-founder and CEO of Skild AI, the Pittsburgh robotics company building a single general-purpose 'brain' that can run any robot from a quadruped to a humanoid. A Raj Reddy Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon, he earned a gold medal at IIT Kanpur and a PhD at UC Berkeley before betting that physical intelligence, not language, is the real path to AGI. In January 2026 Skild raised $1.4 billion at a valuation north of $14 billion, backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos.