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Amitaabh Malhotra Has Spent 30 Years Making the Checkout Disappear
From a networked driving simulator to an iPhone payment sleeve to face, palm and voice authentication, his career follows one stubborn idea: useful technology should remove a step, not add one.
Dylan Allen-Arnegård Is Turning the Humble Review Into AI Search Currency
He learned rejection door to door in Argentina, built NFC experiments in a Utah garage, and moved to San Francisco to help local businesses become legible to machines. Now the Cheers co-founder is betting that a five-star review can be both a thank-you note and a data point.
Harry Lerner Built the Machines That Make the Line Disappear
For two decades, Harry Lerner has obsessed over a moment most people barely notice: the instant a ticket becomes an open door. His playbook is built on useful details, patient adaptation and hardware designed to disappear into the job.
The Rice-Sized Sensor Trying to End the IVF Blood-Test Marathon
A fertility patient can give blood every other day for weeks and still miss the hormone surges that decide whether a cycle works. Impli wants to put a continuous read of that biology under the skin - or on it.
The Grand Rapids Company That Puts a Radio Inside Your Pill Bottle Cap
How a vertically integrated RFID factory in Michigan built a business on a simple bet: that the smartest part of a medicine bottle should be the cap.
CANDY HOUSE
CANDY HOUSE, Inc. is the consumer-hardware company behind Sesame, the retrofit smart lock that mounts over an existing deadbolt with adhesive tape and turns a smartphone, fingerprint, card, PIN or face into a key. Founded in 2014 by Stanford engineer Jerming Gu and famous for a 2015 Kickstarter that raised about $1.4M, the company built an open ecosystem around SesameOS - locks, touch and face readers, a coin-sized Matter hub, sensors and finger robots - aimed at making smart-home access affordable, rental-friendly and developer-open.
EON
EON is a New York-based enterprise software company building the Digital ID layer for physical products. Through its EON Product Cloud platform, brands give each item a unique, traceable digital identity - accessed via QR code, NFC chip or RFID tag - that follows the product across its full lifecycle, powering resale, repair, authentication, customer engagement and compliance with the EU's upcoming Digital Product Passport regulation. Founded in 2017 by Natasha Franck, EON authored the open CircularID Protocol and works with brands including Coach, Chloe, H&M, Mulberry and Target.
HiHello, Inc.
HiHello builds digital business cards, email signatures, virtual backgrounds, and contact management tools for individuals and enterprises. Founded in 2018 in Palo Alto by serial founder Manu Kumar (CardMunch, Carta) and Hari Ravi, the company turns the awkward exchange of paper rectangles into a tappable, shareable, trackable contact moment.
Wen Miao
Wen Miao is the co-founder and CEO of Lava.ai, a San Francisco-based company building real-time AI-powered customer engagement and loyalty platforms for sports teams, entertainment venues, and enterprise brands. Before Lava.ai, he was SVP and GM at TIBCO Software, where he led global client services and launched real-time predictive customer engagement platforms. Lava.ai counts Real Madrid, the LA Rams, the Sacramento Kings, and the Cleveland Browns among its clients, and has raised over $33.7M in funding. In 2015, Computerworld named Miao a Premier 100 IT Leader.