About
Utah AI Lab started in 2026 in Salt Lake City. Students and recent graduates build working software against problems that already hurt. If the prototype can be a company, we pair it with a founder. If it cannot, we scuttle it and start the next one.
Founding teams may include students. Founders and investors may earn or buy a majority. The lab tees the work up. Someone else takes the company.
Dave Norwood teaches information systems at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, and he has founded technology companies and taken them through a sale. At the lab he is the channel: students, operators, and Utah industry in one conversation, then the prototypes that deserve a company.
Carson Pyle builds practical AI at the University of Utah: language models, agents, and software a team can actually run. At the lab he turns a business problem into an architecture students can build, then tests whether the thing is useful.
Darren Wesemann has spent four decades in enterprise software, in seats that include CEO, president, CTO, and CPO across eleven companies. He also directs the University of Utah’s Crimson Projects program, where graduate students ship real work for real organizations. At the lab he takes a working prototype and decides whether it should become a product and a company.
James Reilly is a technologist and inventor. At the lab he looks for the idea that is not the obvious one, and he stays with students and founders from the first experiment through a prototype and intellectual property worth owning.
Kevin Welsh runs the floor. A problem comes in, a student team gets a statement of work and a deadline, and the result is a founder or a stop. He keeps that loop moving.