This Month's Latest Tech News in Cincinnati, OH - Sunday August 31st 2025 Edition

Weekly commentary: Cincinnati's AI moment - momentum, questions, and community - Pantomath's $30M Series B led by General Catalyst puts a Mason/Cincinnati‑area startup squarely on the map as it moves to replace manual data ops with autonomous AI DRE agents that detect, trace and self‑resolve pipeline issues; the round is meant to accelerate product innovation, go‑to‑market expansion and strategic hiring (Pantomath raises $30M Series B - official press release).

That combination of deep tech and local growth raises practical questions - talent, governance, and who owns data reliability - but it also creates a clear pathway for professionals to reskill: Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp (15 weeks) teaches workplace AI tools and prompt skills so teams can turn momentum into measurable productivity gains.

“Pantomath slashed the time our teams spent tracking down broken pipelines. With their automated root‑cause analysis, we resolve issues in minutes (not hours, days or weeks) so our business partners always have trusted data.” - Andrew Connolly, Director of Site Reliability Engineering, WEX

Pantomath raises $30M Series B to accelerate enterprise data ops in Cincinnati - the Mason‑area AI startup closed the round on August 4, 2025, led by General Catalyst with participation from Sierra Ventures, Bowery Capital, Epic Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Cintrifuse Capital and Foster Ventures, signaling a push to turn observability into an operating system for data operations and scale its AI DRE (Data Reliability Engineer) agents to automate incident detection, traceability and self‑resolution; read the Pantomath official press release or Cincinnati Business Courier coverage of Pantomath funding for details on leadership, investors and the company's plan to accelerate product innovation, go‑to‑market expansion and strategic hiring; the raise builds on a $14M Series A in 2023 and includes Quentin Clark of General Catalyst joining the board, a move that underscores investor confidence as enterprises look to cut data downtime and restore trust in analytics workflows.

“Pantomath slashed the time our teams spent tracking down broken pipelines. With their automated root‑cause analysis, we resolve issues in minutes (not hours, days or weeks) so our business partners always have trusted data.” - Andrew Connolly, Director of Site Reliability Engineering, WEX

University of Cincinnati advances FY2025 digital transformation - BearcatGPT, Copilot and secure research cloud - UC's Digital Technology Solutions is moving from pilot to production with a suite of campus AI tools (Microsoft Copilot Chat, Zoom AI Companion, LinkedIn Learning's AI coaching and Adobe Firefly) while scaling a private OpenAI environment: the BearcatGPT pilot (now surfacing DALL‑E and GPT‑4o/3.5 capabilities) lets faculty, staff and a roughly 1,000‑user cohort build custom GPTs for tutoring, research and process automation; read the DTS semiannual report for the FY2025 milestones and the detailed BearcatGPT pilot overview to see how UC balances enablement with controls via an AI Enablement Community of Practice and a planned CMMC‑compliant research cloud to protect sensitive grant work and broaden federal eligibility.

“Together, we are harnessing the power of technology to create meaningful change within our community and ensure our students thrive and succeed.” - Bharath Prabhakaran, UC Vice President & Chief Digital Officer

Kroger doubles down on AI for inventory, productivity and customer experience - the Cincinnati grocer is moving beyond pilots to embed automation across stores and supply chains, from RFID‑embedded bakery labels to autonomous shelf‑scanning robots and AI assistants for associates.

Early results: AI‑driven inventory and shrink management are improving on‑shelf availability and cutting waste, a centralized eCommerce unit helped deliver a 15% lift in online sales, and store modernization plans pair sensors with smarter workflows so employees spend less time hunting stock and more time with customers.

Local pilots include Simbe's Tally (and Barney, named after Kroger's founder) for real‑time shelf counts and pricing checks, while an Avery Dennison RFID rollout promises item‑level freshness tracking - read the National CIO Review analysis of Kroger's AI strategy and RetailTouchpoints coverage of the RFID program for details.

“much better visibility of the inventory we've got in store,”

Ohio lawmakers introduced the “Right to Compute Act” (HB 392), a bill that would enact section 9.89 of the Revised Code to both limit further regulation of certain computational systems and require risk‑management policies for AI‑controlled critical infrastructure; read the full bill text on the Ohio legislature site and a concise summary on TrackBill.

Sponsored by Reps. Tex Fischer and Steve Demetriou and officially filed as House Bill 392, the proposal stitches together two competing priorities: preserving broad access to compute while forcing operators of critical systems to formalize AI risk controls - a mix that puts state lawmakers at the center of the national conversation over how to balance innovation, safety and who sets the rules for emerging AI infrastructure.

"This Bill puts forward a framework for how Ohio should responsibly approach artificial intelligence. It's about setting clear guardrails that ..."

Teen Paisley Tuel - a 19‑year‑old Case Western Reserve pre‑law student from Jackson Township - helped turn a 50‑page undergraduate law‑journal paper into real legislative momentum, meeting with Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo and now assisting in drafting a bill that would create an Ohio AI Healthcare Regulatory Committee to certify AI tools, mandate testing and monitoring in hospitals, and require patient consent when AI drives medical decisions; local coverage from the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Canton Repository captures how student research and concern about insurer algorithms that deny claims pushed this issue into the Statehouse conversation and why Ohio's current lack of healthcare AI rules makes oversight urgent (Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio teen helps draft legislation on health care and AI, read the Cincinnati Enquirer report, Canton Repository: Paisley Tuel helps draft Ohio health care AI legislation, read the Canton Repository coverage).

“AI is moving fast in health care and offers real promise, but we need thoughtful protections for the people it is meant to serve when AI doesn't work as planned. Striking the right balance between innovation and patient safety and privacy is not just a policy goal, it is a moral imperative.” - Allison Russo

Dayton Children's is rolling ambient AI into exam rooms through a partnership with Abridge, joining a wave of eight children's hospitals adopting the startup's contextual‑reasoning platform to turn bedside conversations into structured, EHR‑ready notes; hospital leaders say the goal is simple and urgent - cut charting time so clinicians spend more attention on families (and less on keyboards) - and Abridge's pediatric‑specific templates, Epic integrations and support for more than 50 specialties and 28 languages are key to that promise.

The move comes as children's hospitals face financial pressure - Abridge's pediatric report notes operating margins hit a 10‑year low in 2024 - so ambient AI must deliver enterprise value beyond clinician convenience.

Dayton Children's CIO J.D. Whitlock framed the choice as strategic, pointing to note quality and Epic depth, while Abridge highlights real‑time, billable notes and workflow automation that can reduce after‑hours charting; for local readers, the Dayton Daily News coverage explains what families and staff can expect and Abridge's platform page outlines the enterprise controls and security that underpin the rollout.

“The question for health systems is not really, ‘should we do ambient AI?' – because ambient will very quickly be the expected functionality for providers,” - J.D. Whitlock, CIO, Dayton Children's

CoSN names lead trainers for national K‑12 AI readiness - Cincinnati educators on the team - The Consortium for School Networking tapped a dozen Lead Trainers to scale its Building Capacity for Generative AI in K‑12 Education project, and among them are local names Cincinnati readers should note: David Clark (Curriculum & Technology Specialist, Butler County ESC, Hamilton, OH) and Rebecca Dwenger (Instructional Technology Consultant, Technology Assistance Group, Hamilton County ESC, Cincinnati, OH).

These Lead Trainers completed a 1.5‑day Milwaukee session and will mentor Regional Trainers who then deliver three‑day regional train‑the‑trainer events, turning CoSN's Gen AI Maturity Tool into district roadmaps and six‑to‑twelve‑month action plans; the commitment (roughly March–December 2025) includes at least one regional delivery between April and June and about 225 hours of support, so the national program converts broad policy frameworks into hands‑on planning time for school leaders.

Read CoSN's project overview and the Lead Trainer roster for details on the initiative and how Cincinnati's edtech leaders fit into the national rollout.

Microsoft's recent move to “slow or pause” early-stage AI data-center projects has clear local economic implications: the company halted work on a planned $1 billion buildout across New Albany, Hebron and Heath in Licking County - pausing a New Albany campus that had been scoped at roughly 245,000 sq ft on about 197 acres and leaving two sites to be returned to farmland - leaving contractors, local officials and utility planners to recalibrate timelines and tax‑base projections; DatacenterDynamics reported the pause, while broader market coverage notes the move is part of a tactical reshuffle rather than a collapse in AI demand as suppliers and cloud firms continue heavy investment (CNBC analyzed the wider pause trend); the practical takeaway for Ohio communities is simple and urgent - near‑term job, infrastructure and utility plans tied to these campuses may slip even as cloud capex is reallocated elsewhere.

“Any significant new endeavor at this size and scale requires agility and refinement as we learn and grow with our customers. What this means is that we are slowing or pausing some early‑stage projects.” - Noelle Walsh, President, Microsoft Cloud Operations & Innovation

Police use of drones, robots and AI in Hamilton County and beyond has moved from novelty to routine, and the trade‑offs are stark: Hamilton County's fleet (about 16 drones) and Cincinnati's new Drone‑as‑First‑Responder program - powered by Skydio and Axon and aiming for roughly 90% city coverage by the end of 2025 - can give officers near‑instant aerial views that improve safety and speed (one vendor recounted finding a lost child in 30 seconds), but civil‑liberties groups warn of mission creep, warrantless overflights and weak public oversight; advocates want flight logs, retention limits and clearer laws rather than department‑only policies, a debate laid out in local reporting from The Dispatch and WCPO that shows how public safety gains collide with privacy questions.

The Dispatch report on police drone use and civil‑liberties concerns in central Ohio and WCPO coverage of Cincinnati Police Department's Drone‑as‑First‑Responder rollout and goals detail the tensions.

“Ohio has a ‘Wild West' approach to drone surveillance.” - Gary Daniels, ACLU Ohio

UC, 1819 Innovation Hub and regional leaders report from SXSW - AI, quantum and the future of computing - SXSW's beefed‑up quantum programming (March 12–13) ran seamlessly with the AI track, turning what once felt like lab‑book theory into pragmatic sessions on materials discovery, optimization and drug research; explore the full SXSW quantum lineup at the SXSW 2025 quantum programming schedule SXSW 2025 Quantum Programming Lineup.

IBM's high‑profile presence in Austin reinforced the message: AI and quantum are complementary tools for solving new classes of problems, and the company used watsonx and a Granite LLM in an interactive demo (yes, a foosball and ping‑pong table that profiled play style and handed out plain‑English advice) to make the point viscerally - quantum won't be just a future footnote but a partner to AI and HPC in hybrid workflows; read IBM's on‑the‑ground SXSW quantum and AI report IBM Research: SXSW Quantum and AI Coverage.

The practical “so what?” for Cincinnati: start mapping talent pipelines and partnerships now, because the platforms and vendor alliances that stitch quantum, AI and high‑performance compute are moving from demos toward pilotable, industry‑grade stacks.

“I'm incredibly excited about quantum. ... it's going to surprise you before this decade is up.” - Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM

Conclusion: What Cincinnati's tech scene should watch next - keep an eye on university spinouts, coordinated funding, and the calendar of convenings that turn ideas into scalable companies: UC's 1819 Innovation Hub is already spawning standout teams (six UC‑backed startups made the Cincinnati Business Courier's “Startups to Watch,” from AI research tools to Airtrek Robotics' “Roomba for the tarmac”) - read the UC roundup for profiles - while the State of Ohio's $67.4M push to support entrepreneurs (including a $200K TVSF award to Airtrek) means capital is flowing into the region's commercialization pipeline.

Track community moments like Cincy AI Week, which concentrates talent, employers, and responsible‑AI conversations into a week of practical sessions and demos.

For professionals and managers, the practical move is to map what skills the market needs next: Nucamp's 15‑week AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teaches hands‑on prompt and tool skills so teams can turn local momentum into measurable productivity gains.

“Here in Ohio, we're investing in opportunities that will keep us on the cutting edge of technology and innovation.” - Governor Mike DeWine