With millions of eyes around the world focused on Pittsburgh next week, the local tech community is determined to promote a new identity for the Steel City — as an artificial intelligence innovation hub.

“You have all kinds of organizations doing great things, cleaning up the city, rolling out the red carpet, and this event is going to push the message to the world that we are the Steel and AI city,” said Joanna Doven, executive director of the AI Strike Team. “It is time to push.”

That push starts on the eve of the draft, April 22, at the “Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase” at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Innovation Center in Hazelwood Green.

The event will include a “Shark Tank”-style competition, with Mt. Lebanon-native Mark Cuban serving as one of the judges, in which startups from across the country pitch themselves for a chance to win $1.75 million — with the promise that they relocate to Pennsylvania. There will also be panel discussions on tech and sports with Steelers legend Jerome Bettis, and another on Pittsburgh’s AI savvy with Gov. Josh Shapiro, County Executive Sara Innamorato, Mayor Corey O’Connor and CMU president Farnam Jahanian.

The tech showcase includes “two of the biggest brands” in Pittsburgh, Doven said: CMU and the Steelers.

The draft, April 23-25, is expected to draw 500,000 to 700,000 visitors; the goal is to demonstrate “that this is a very interesting time in Pittsburgh’s history,” she said.

“You have one of the top sports franchises in the world talking about how they’re in an AI city, having an event at one of the most historically relevant steel sites during World War II, where the future of autonomy is being built,” Doven said.

The event was months in the making.

The conversation began in September at the AI Horizons summit in Bakery Square, headlined by Sen. Dave McCormick, Shapiro and several tech industry heavyweights. Then came a meeting with CMU, which already works with the NFL on data analytics, and eventually Cuban’s name entered the conversation.

“I pitched Mark Cuban first, communicating that this was about telling Pittsburgh’s story, that we’re leveraging the moment and that we need him,” Doven said. “And he agreed.” In a fireside chat with Cuban, Doven plans on asking the billionaire if “you were a college student now in Pittsburgh, would you have left?”

Another presentation will focus on physical AI — the marriage of AI software with physical systems that can sense and adapt to its surrounding environment — in which robots will throw footballs, “blurring the line between athlete and machine and showcasing real-time human-AI interaction in sport,” according to an announcement for the event.

“This showcase reflects the spirit of Pittsburgh, a City of Champions where excellence in sport and innovation go hand in hand,” said Meredith Meyer Grelli, managing director and interim executive director for CMU’s Swartz Center of Entrepreneurship. “At Carnegie Mellon, we’re proud to bring together founders, industry leaders, and investors who are building what’s next at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship and performance.”

With nearly 100 applications from startups around the country, only a handful of finalists will get to pitch the judges.

In addition to Cuban, the panel includes: Ed Stack, executive of Dick’s Sporting Goods; Will Allen, former Steeler, and founding partner of Magarac Venture; Deap Ubhi, director and global head of solutions architect for startups, Amazon Web Services; Troy Demmer, Gecko Robotics co-founder and president; and Jeanne Cucinelli, president of UPMC Enterprises and executive vice president of UPMC.

Doven said when NFL owners met at their last annual meeting, “the number one thing that was discussed (was) artificial intelligence.” Doven said.

“It’s a must to win. And we have all of that here.”

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