Physna is a geometric deep-learning company that does for 3D models and physical objects what Google did for text: it lets machines actually understand shape. Its proprietary technology codifies the geometry of any 3D model into searchable, comparable data, powering both an enterprise platform used by Fortune 500 manufacturers and government agencies, and Thangs, a free public 3D search engine and creator community that has grown to tens of millions of monthly users. Founded in 2015 in Ohio and backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global, GV and Drive Capital with more than $86M raised, Physna turns the physical world into something a computer can search, match and protect.
Planet FWD is a San Francisco climate management platform that helps consumer brands measure, reduce and neutralize their carbon footprint. Founded in 2019 by Zume co-founder Julia Collins, the company pairs an AI-powered life-cycle assessment engine and a database built on 16+ years of research with Scope 1, 2 and 3 corporate inventories aligned to the GHG Protocol and the Science Based Targets initiative. The result: brands like Patagonia Provisions, Kashi, Just Salad and Numi Organic Tea can put an auditable carbon number on the products people actually buy - and get a roadmap to shrink it, on average by about 35% per product.
PlayerZero is a predictive software quality platform that uses agentic AI to help enterprises fix, learn from, and prevent software bugs before they reach customers. Its CodeSim technology, powered by a custom model called Sim-1, simulates how code changes will behave across large codebases without unit tests or human intervention - acting as an 'immune system' for code in an era when more than 20% of new enterprise code is AI-generated. Founded by Animesh Koratana out of Stanford's DAWN lab and based in Atlanta and San Francisco, the company raised $20M total across seed and Series A rounds in 2025.
Quantum Boost is a London-based deep-tech startup building an AI formulation assistant for the chemicals and materials industry. Its platform uses Bayesian optimization and machine learning to help R&D scientists design smarter experiments, cut the number of lab trials needed to hit a target, and surface insights from existing experimental data. The company claims its approach reaches formulation targets roughly 2-5x faster than traditional Design of Experiments (DoE), and serves teams working on inks, paints and coatings, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals.
Quilter is a Los Angeles-based company building the first fully autonomous, physics-driven AI for printed circuit board (PCB) layout. Founded in 2019 by former SpaceX avionics engineer Sergiy Nesterenko, Quilter trains reinforcement-learning agents on the laws of physics - not human design patterns - to place components, route traces, and physics-validate complete board designs in hours instead of weeks. The company positions itself as the 'compiler for hardware,' aiming to make manual PCB layout as obsolete as hand-compiling code.
Pierre-Olivier Lepage is the CEO and co-founder of Cruisebound, a New York-based digital-first cruise booking platform he launched in 2022 after struggling to book his own first cruise online. A Polytechnique Montréal engineering graduate who earned dual MIT master's degrees in Transportation and Operations Research, Lepage previously built operations at Rocket Travel (a Booking Holdings company) and consulted at McKinsey before betting that the $66B cruise industry — where 80% of bookings still flow through travel agents — was ripe for a tech-native overhaul. Cruisebound has since raised $37.8M in total funding, serves customers averaging nine years younger than typical cruisers, and routes 42% of support queries through AI, positioning itself as the fastest-growing national online cruise agency.
ScoreData Corporation is a Palo Alto-based AI/ML company that helps consumer-facing businesses turn legacy and external data into real-time predictive decisions. Its ScoreFast platform builds and continuously updates machine learning models with minimal manual work, powering omni-channel customer engagement, caller-to-agent mapping, fraud detection, churn management and cross-sell for financial services, insurance and healthcare contact centers.
Skild AI is a Pittsburgh-based robotics company building the Skild Brain, a single general-purpose foundation model designed to control any robot - quadrupeds, humanoids, tabletop arms, mobile manipulators - across many tasks without bespoke retraining. Founded in 2023 by former Carnegie Mellon professors Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, the company trains on a mix of large-scale simulation, internet video, teleoperation and real-world deployment data. After a $1.4B Series C in January 2026, Skild AI is valued at over $14 billion.
Eliot Horowitz is the founder and CEO of Viam, a New York robotics-and-automation software platform that lets developers build, deploy, and manage machines in the physical world. He wrote the original core code of MongoDB, which he co-founded in 2007 and steered as CTO for 13 years through a 2017 IPO and a market cap that climbed into the tens of billions. After tinkering with a cat feeder, a chess-playing robot, and a smarter sprinkler during the pandemic, he concluded that robotics hardware had outrun its software, and built Viam to close that gap.
Georgios Pipelidis is the co-founder and CEO of Ariadne, a Munich-born company that turns the anonymous radio signals leaking from smartphones into privacy-first analytics about how people move through airports, stores and stations - no cameras, no apps, no network connection required. A computer scientist with a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Technical University of Munich, he turned an academic project on indoor positioning - one that beat Google, IBM, Samsung, Cisco and Sony at a 2018 global competition - into a company operating sensors in hundreds of locations worldwide, backed by a $7M Series A.
JaeKwon Son is the founder and CEO of The Miilk (더밀크), a Silicon Valley-based subscription media and tech-intelligence platform that delivers technology, economy, and investment insight to Korean readers worldwide. After 17-plus years as a tech and business reporter in Korea and a stint as Maeil Business Newspaper's Silicon Valley correspondent, he immigrated to the U.S. and launched The Miilk in 2019 to bridge American innovation and Korean enterprise. Under his leadership the company raised roughly $4.8 billion KRW (about $3.8M) in Series A funding, broke the exclusive that Tesla was entering humanoid robotics, and built an ad-free subscription model focused on perspective over raw news.
Han Jin is the co-founder and CEO of Bluwhale, a San Francisco AI company building an intelligence layer on the blockchain that lets people own and monetize their own data. Born in China, raised in Germany, and trained as an engineer at KIT and UC Berkeley, he first made his name building the LucidCam - one of the earliest consumer 3D/VR cameras - at Lucid VR. A Forbes and Inc. '30 Under 30' honoree, he now wants to turn the world's 7 billion smartphones into a decentralized AI network that rivals Google and AWS but is owned collectively by its users.
Zone24x7 is a US-headquartered, end-to-end technology innovation company that weaves hardware and software into intelligent products for enterprises - from Fortune 500 retailers to startups. Founded in 2003 by Llavan and Saw-Chin Fernando, it pairs a San Jose business front with a deep engineering talent hub in Colombo, Sri Lanka, delivering AI, data science, embedded systems, IoT, computer vision, RFID and DevOps work for 50+ enterprise customers across retail, manufacturing, logistics and healthcare.
Naren Kini is the CEO and co-founder of Global Touchpoints Inc., a California-based IT services and consulting firm he built organically over 20+ years to 150+ employees and $15M+ in annual revenue — entirely without outside capital. Starting from a background in industrial engineering and early stints at Hinditron and Syntel, Kini built Touchpoints into a trusted partner for Fortune 500 companies like Meta, Intuit, and Fiserv, as well as California state government agencies, specializing in Salesforce, AWS, data analytics, AI consulting, and managed services.
Summer Robotics is a Campbell, California machine-vision company giving robots what it calls superhuman perception. Its patented Kortx platform fuses event-based sensors with continuous laser scanning - a category the company calls laser-event sensing - to deliver blur-free 3D tracking with sub-5ms latency, 100-micron precision and 100Hz tracking. The technology lets robots see and react in dynamic, unstructured, variably lit environments, including on metal, glossy and transparent surfaces that defeat conventional cameras, unlocking automation in manufacturing, logistics and humanoid applications.
Joel Beal is the CEO and co-founder of Alloy.ai, a demand and inventory control tower that helps consumer goods brands like Bic, Bosch, Crayola and Ferrero turn messy retailer data into daily, SKU-store-level decisions. A would-be economics academic who walked away from a Stanford PhD because it felt too theoretical, Beal built a career in applied data science at Applied Predictive Technologies and helped scale fintech Addepar from pre-revenue to $300B in assets before founding Alloy in 2016. The idea came from his sister, who spent her weeks manually stitching together retailer spreadsheets for a luxury shoe brand.
Ken McDonald is the CEO of Leonardo247, a Plano, Texas proptech company whose proactive operations and maintenance software runs across more than 2 million rental units. A Stanford MBA and Dartmouth math-and-economics grad, he has spent 25-plus years turning small online businesses into large ones - scaling LifePics from a few thousand users to 12 million, helping push TeamSnap past 15 million users as Chief Growth Officer, and running dozens of SaaS and payments products as Chief Product Officer at Togetherwork. He co-wrote 'How to Acquire Your First Million Customers' and now applies an operator-first view of AI to the unglamorous world of apartment maintenance.
Michelle Bacharach is the co-founder and CEO of FindMine, a New York AI company that teaches machines to style and merchandise like a brand's best human stylist - then runs that expertise across millions of products for retailers like Lululemon, Gap, Adidas and Anine Bing. A UC Berkeley grad and NYU Stern MBA who detoured through professional acting before building software, she turned a frustrating hunt for an outfit to match a pair of green waxed leggings into a venture-backed 'Complete the Look' platform that brands say lifts shopper spend dramatically.
Monte Zweben is the co-founder and CEO of ControlRooms.ai, an AI troubleshooting platform for chemical and energy plants. A serial entrepreneur and AI pioneer, he ran NASA Ames' artificial intelligence branch (winning a Space Act Award for Space Shuttle work) before founding a string of companies: Red Pepper Software (merged into PeopleSoft), Blue Martini Software (which IPO'd at roughly $2.9 billion), and Splice Machine. He trained at Carnegie Mellon under AI legends Geoffrey Hinton, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, holds a Stanford master's, co-authored the textbook Intelligent Scheduling, and now also advises AI Fund and sits on the board of Haven Safety AI.
Oleksiy Lubinsky (also known as Alex Lubinsky) is the co-founder and CEO of Rentberry, a San Francisco-based platform that automates the long-term rental process from search and custom-offer negotiation to digital leases, rent payments and maintenance. A Ukrainian native and UC Berkeley economics graduate who came out of investment banking, he sold his first company, the networking app City Hour, in 2015 before launching Rentberry that same year. He has pushed the company through one of crypto's most-talked-about ICOs, an AI rebrand, and serial equity-crowdfunding rounds, framing Rentberry as a bid to strip the friction, fees and middlemen out of renting.
True Anomaly is a Colorado-based space defense company building the hardware and software to operate, defend, and win in contested orbit. Its flagship Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle - a highly maneuverable, refrigerator-sized spacecraft - is paired with Mosaic, a full-stack mission autonomy and command-and-control platform. Founded in 2022 by Air Force and Space Force veterans, the company sells primarily to the U.S. Space Force and Department of the Air Force, has raised more than $1 billion across four rounds, and is valued at $2.2 billion after its April 2026 Series D.
Viam is a New York-based software platform that lets engineers build, deploy, and manage AI, data, and automation in the physical world across any hardware - from a single prototype to a global fleet. Founded in 2020 by MongoDB co-founder and former CTO Eliot Horowitz, Viam treats robots, sensors, cameras, and machines as programmable building blocks, giving hardware and software teams a common, modular, largely open-source stack. It powers everything from arena concession lines to robotic kitchens, marine sonar, and industrial equipment, and has raised $117M to date.
z-emotion is a Seoul-based fashion-tech company building 3D garment simulation software that lets designers create true-to-life digital clothing in seconds. Its flagship CAD tool, z-weave, plus plugins for Autodesk Maya and Unreal Engine, a cloud asset library, and AI-driven virtual try-on, help fashion, gaming, and e-commerce companies replace physical samples with photorealistic 3D garments. Founded by former AMD graphics researcher Dongsoo Han, the company pairs game-grade simulation with apparel workflows to push the fashion industry toward digital production.
Avantos is an AI-native operating system for client management in financial services. Built on a knowledge graph that connects client data, products, teams, and work, its AI agents power onboarding, servicing, and growth while fitting into existing tech stacks. Founded in 2024 in New York by Bassam Chaptini and Rabih Ramadi, the company launched with Mercer Advisors and raised a $25M Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners in February 2026, bringing total funding to $35M.
Backflip AI is a San Francisco-based generative AI company building 3D design tools for the physical world. Founded by the Markforged co-founders Greg Mark and David Benhaim, it turns text prompts, sketches and photos into editable 3D meshes (Idea to Mesh) and converts 3D scan data into fully parametric CAD models in one click (Scan-to-CAD / Mesh-to-CAD), with native Onshape and SOLIDWORKS integration. The company raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz and trained its model on a synthetic dataset of over 100 million 3D geometries.
Beacon Power Services (BPS) is an energy-technology company building data and grid-management software for Africa's power sector. Its AI-enabled platforms - Adora for real-time grid monitoring, CAIMS for utility asset and customer data, and the Xepp consumer app - help electricity distributors cut losses, prevent outages and digitize networks. Founded by aerospace engineer turned investment banker Bimbola Adisa, BPS now serves utilities reaching more than 50 million people across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and beyond, processing over a billion grid data points a day.
Centific is a Redmond, Washington-based AI and data company that calls itself the hidden infrastructure behind world-class AI models. Its AI Data Foundry combines a global network of 1.8 million-plus domain experts with platforms for data collection, annotation, RLHF, model evaluation, governance and multimodal orchestration, helping enterprises and frontier model labs move AI from experimentation to production. Founded in 2020 out of the former Pactera EDGE business, Centific is a recognized NVIDIA innovation partner and raised a $60M Series A led by Granite Asia in June 2025.
Corvus Robotics builds fully autonomous indoor drones that count warehouse inventory without human operators or any added infrastructure. Its flagship system, Corvus One, flies through aisles using an onboard AI world model - no GPS, Wi-Fi, fiducial markers, or beacons required - scanning barcodes and pallets to deliver near real-time inventory visibility at claimed 99.9% accuracy. Founded in 2017 out of MIT and backed by Spero Ventures and S2G Ventures, the company targets the slow, manual, error-prone problem of physical inventory counts in distribution centers and production plants.
DARVIS is a health-tech company that uses AI-powered computer vision to give hospitals real-time visibility into their supply rooms. Its flagship product, Digital Shelves, uses smart PTZ cameras to continuously monitor inventory fill-levels and scan barcodes automatically, replacing manual counting with live consumption data, predictive demand planning, and automated reordering. Born in the gaming industry in 2015, the company pivoted to healthcare supply chain and now serves systems such as MD Anderson Cancer Center while operating from Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a hub in Hamburg, Germany, and a presence in Houston, Texas.
Mayan is a growth automation platform for Amazon sellers, built by MIT data scientists and paired with human Customer Success Managers who are proven Amazon PPC experts. It blends machine-learning software with expert account management to automate advertising, bidding, pricing, listings and inventory so brands can grow revenue and profit on Amazon without drowning in the data.