Bakery Square to house new Secure Innovation Center, unlocking $150B in defense tech funding

PITTSBURGH — On June 18, the AI Strike Team announced that Walnut Capital has partnered with Fort Pitt LLC — a Western Pennsylvania nonprofit — to build a new, state-of-the-art Secure Innovation Center in Pittsburgh’s Bakery Square, unlocking access to a $150 billion federal budget allocated toward defense technology.

Construction will begin this fall on the initial 6,000-square-foot facility, which will provide a secure workspace for the region.

“This is an absolutely vital piece of infrastructure,” Andrew Moore, CEO of Lovelace AI, former dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, and a national security advisor said in a release. “It creates the foundation for serious government collaboration — something Pittsburgh’s ecosystem is more than ready for.”