PDF Solutions is a Santa Clara semiconductor analytics company that turns the firehose of chip-manufacturing and test data into decisions. Its Exensio platform connects fabs, foundries, OSATs and fabless designers, normalizing data across silos so customers can ramp yield faster, catch defects earlier and run AI/ML models on the factory floor. Founded in 1991 and public since 2001 (Nasdaq: PDFS), it serves 130+ semiconductor companies including TSMC, Intel, Qualcomm, Analog Devices and DENSO.
Sergiy Nesterenko is the founder and CEO of Quilter, a Los Angeles company building AI that designs printed circuit boards on its own. A former SpaceX avionics engineer who spent five years on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy electronics, he watched one of his first boards literally burn up in his hands and decided manual PCB layout was a problem worth a decade. Quilter trains its system on physics and constraints rather than copying human designers, and in 2025 it produced the world's first fully functional computer laid out by AI.
Matthew Haber is the co-founder and CEO of Cofactr, a New York-based platform that automates procurement and logistics for electronics hardware teams in aerospace, defense, medtech and robotics. A theater-designer-turned-engineer, he built tours for Coachella acts and escape rooms before co-founding an experiential R&D firm (BeSide) that sold to agency MAS in 2018. He launched Cofactr in the Y Combinator W22 batch; in December 2024 the company raised a $17.2M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures, bringing total funding to roughly $28.8M.
Flux is a browser-based, AI-native hardware design platform that turns text prompts into manufacturable printed circuit boards. The San Francisco company calls its product an 'AI Hardware Engineer' and is rewriting how electronics get designed by combining an electronic CAD environment with an agentic copilot that researches parts, draws schematics, lays out boards, and prepares files for fabrication.
Make: is the media and events company that gave the maker movement its name. Founded in 2005 by Dale Dougherty inside O'Reilly Media, it publishes Make: magazine, runs Maker Faire events around the world, and sells kits and books through the Maker Shed. After a 2019 shutdown, Dougherty restructured the business as Make: Community LLC and kept it going.
Dale Dougherty is the founder of Make: magazine and Maker Faire, and widely credited as the father of the Maker Movement. A co-founder of O'Reilly Media, he launched the internet's first commercial web portal (GNN) in 1993, helped popularize the term 'Web 2.0' in 2004, and coined the word 'makers' to describe hands-on creators and tinkerers. Today he leads Make: Community LLC, an organization that inspires millions through DIY technology, education, and events spanning 40+ countries.
Kamran Maniar is the Chief Executive Officer at Flux (flux.ai), the AI-powered PCB design platform headquartered in San Francisco. Flux - backed by 8VC and Bain Capital Ventures - has raised $39 million in total funding and serves over one million hardware builders across the globe, making professional circuit board design as accessible as writing a prompt. Operating at the intersection of AI, electronics, and manufacturing, Maniar leads from the crossroads of Silicon Valley ambition and Pakistan's deep engineering talent.
Matthias Wagner is the German-born co-founder and CEO of Flux, the San Francisco-based AI hardware design platform that turns text prompts into production-ready circuit boards in a single browser tab. Before Flux, he produced the Crazy Frog 'Axel F' ringtone that accumulated nearly 3.8 billion YouTube views, led product teams at Facebook for Moments, AR ads, and Oculus VR, and built digital signage company 42 media group out of a friend's garage at age 24. He founded Flux in 2019 out of frustration that hardware tooling had not evolved in decades, and by 2026 had grown the platform to over 1 million sign-ups and raised $37 million in funding led by 8VC.
UnitX builds AI-powered visual inspection systems for manufacturers who can't afford to ship defective products. Their flagship platform - combining OptiX (software-defined imaging), CorteX (AI edge computing), GenX (synthetic defect generation), and FleX (the full integrated system) - cuts defect escape rates by 9x and deploys in about a week. With 820+ systems running across 170+ factories globally, UnitX has inspected over $6.1 billion worth of goods and counts five of the world's top ten automotive tier-1 suppliers among its customers.
Daniel Perez is a veteran electronics manufacturing executive with over 35 years of industry leadership. He co-founded OnCore Manufacturing Services, served as EVP at Solectron Corporation where revenues grew from $250M to over $12B, and joined Clover Wireless in April 2017 as CEO and Executive Chairman. He architected the acquisition of Teleplan in 2019 and led the subsequent rebrand to Reconext in 2020 - creating a global aftermarket lifecycle services company serving manufacturers, retailers, data centers, and enterprises across consumer electronics, mobile devices, and enterprise equipment. Perez holds an MBA and BA in Political Science from UCLA and serves on the boards of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and The Tech Interactive.
Keven Wang is the Co-Founder and CEO of UnitX, a Santa Clara-based AI robotics company transforming industrial quality control through machine vision. A Stanford computer science alumnus with roots in SalesforceIQ engineering, Wang founded UnitX in 2018 alongside Adam Yang and Weixiong Zheng. The company has since deployed 820+ AI inspection systems across 135+ factories worldwide - inspecting $6.1B worth of products annually - and raised $92M in total funding. UnitX's flagship platforms (FleX, GenX, OptiX) help automotive, EV battery, and electronics manufacturers cut defect escapes by 9x and reduce scrap rates by up to 50%, with a philosophy Wang distills as: 'automate everything and maximize human intellect.'