Ottometric is a Waltham, Massachusetts software company that uses AI to automate the validation and training of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous-vehicle software. Its platform distills petabyte-scale, multimodal sensor data into decision-ready KPIs, cutting validation cost and time by more than half for the Tier-1 suppliers and OEMs that build the cars' eyes and reflexes.
Tutor Intelligence builds AI-powered collaborative robots that pick, pack, and palletize alongside people on factory and warehouse floors. Born out of MIT's CSAIL, the company sells robots by the hour - a Robots-as-a-Service model that drops a working robot onto a line in days, not months, with no programming required. Its flagship Cassie handles infinite SKUs at up to 14 cases per minute, while Data Factory 1, a 100-robot facility in a renovated Watertown mill, trains the next generation of factory-ready robot AI on real-world data.
Sameer Wasson is the CEO of MIPS, the storied semiconductor IP company now reborn as a RISC-V pure-play targeting the physical AI era. He joined in September 2023 after 18 years at Texas Instruments, where he ran the Processors business and earlier built TI's mmWave radar franchise. MIPS is now a subsidiary of GlobalFoundries.
BrightAI is a Palo Alto-based physical AI company building Stateful OS, a platform that pairs edge sensors, robots, and multimodal AI models to monitor, inspect, and maintain critical infrastructure - pipes, power grids, HVAC systems, and more. Co-founded in 2019 by SmartThings creator Alex Hawkinson, the company crossed $80M in revenue while bootstrapped before raising a $51M Series A in July 2025.
Chef Robotics builds AI-powered robotic arms that assemble meals in food production plants. Its ChefOS platform powers Robotics-as-a-Service deployments at customers like Amy's Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice, having helped produce 70+ million servings across North America.
Nathan Hanks is the co-founder of BrightAI, a physical AI platform company that deploys IoT sensors and edge AI to monitor and optimize critical infrastructure for enterprises. Previously, he co-founded ReachLocal, scaling it to $500M in annual revenue and 2,200 employees before its NASDAQ IPO in 2010 and subsequent acquisition by Gannett in 2016. He also founded Music Audience Exchange (MAX), a music sponsorship technology platform. At BrightAI, Hanks and his team bootstrapped the company to $80M in revenue before raising a $15M seed round in November 2024 and a $51M Series A in July 2025, with the company now surpassing $100M in annual revenue and 250,000+ AI endpoints deployed.
Rajat Bhageria is the founder and CEO of Chef Robotics, a San Francisco-based company building AI-enabled robotic systems for flexible food assembly automation. After founding accessibility tech startup ThirdEye (acquired 2017) and co-founding pre-seed VC fund Prototype Capital, Bhageria launched Chef Robotics in 2019 to tackle the labor crisis in food manufacturing. The company has deployed robots across 12+ facilities in the US, Canada, and Europe, completing over 100 million food servings as of April 2026, backed by $72.7M in total funding. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree (2022), Bhageria is also a published scientist, author, and prolific writer with bylines in Forbes, TechCrunch, and HuffPost.
Rish Gupta is the Co-founder and CEO of Spot AI, a San Francisco-based video intelligence company turning passive security cameras into AI-powered teammates for the physical economy. A Stanford GSB alum originally from Delhi, Rish built his first company—LetsIntern.com—to 4 million users and sold it before moving to Silicon Valley. At Spot AI, he leads a team that processes more daily video than YouTube receives in uploads, serving 1,000+ customers across 17 industries with an AI platform that has driven 40% injury reductions in manufacturing and 8X ROI in auto services. The company has raised $93M from Redpoint, Bessemer, Scale Venture Partners, and Qualcomm Ventures.
Bonsai Robotics is a San Jose-based agricultural autonomy company that builds vision-first AI systems for off-road farm equipment. Founded in 2022 by veterans of Blue River Technology and John Deere, the company's Intelligence Platform combines embedded autonomy software with retrofittable hardware kits to let existing and new farm machinery operate with minimal human input - even in GPS-denied fields, at night, and in heavy dust. With $28.5M raised and its July 2025 acquisition of farm-ng, Bonsai is expanding from specialty-crop orchards into bedded-crop row farming and modular electric robot platforms.
Outsight builds Physical AI software that turns raw 3D LiDAR data into real-time, anonymous spatial intelligence - tracking people and vehicles inside airports, train stations, stadiums, factories and city streets without ever recording a face.
Point One Navigation builds the precision-location stack behind autonomous vehicles, drones, robots and survey-grade tools. Its Polaris RTK network, Atlas inertial sensors and FusionEngine software fuse GNSS, inertial data and computer vision to deliver centimeter-level positioning across the US, Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
Aaron Nathan is the CEO and co-founder of Point One Navigation, a San Francisco-based precision location company building the infrastructure layer for Physical AI. A Cornell-trained engineer who helped lead the university's DARPA Urban Challenge team, he went on to serve as Chief Architect at Coherent Navigation (acquired by Apple) before co-founding adeptCloud (acquired by Hightail). At Point One, he is turning centimeter-level GPS accuracy from a specialist tool into a universal platform — raising a $35M oversubscribed Series C from Khosla Ventures in 2025 to accelerate a mission: making precise location as ubiquitous as GPS itself.
Brad Porter is the Founder and CEO of Collaborative Robotics (Cobot), a Santa Clara-based startup building AI-powered collaborative robots designed to work alongside humans rather than replace them. After 14 years at Amazon — where he rose to VP of Robotics and Distinguished Engineer, deploying over 250,000 robots — Porter left to briefly serve as CTO at Scale AI before founding Cobot in May 2022. In under three years, he raised $140M in funding (including a $100M Series B led by General Catalyst in April 2024), launched the Proxie robot in November 2024, and signed customers including Mayo Clinic, Maersk, Moderna, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Cédric Hutchings is a French serial entrepreneur and engineer who has spent two decades turning sensors into systems that change how the physical world gets understood. He co-founded Withings in 2008, building one of the first connected health companies from scratch to a €170M Nokia acquisition, then pivoted to co-found Outsight in 2019 - a Paris-based spatial intelligence company deploying 3D LiDAR software in airports, rail stations, and smart cities worldwide. Today, Outsight holds a $17.2M contract with Dallas Fort Worth Airport for the world's largest 3D LiDAR deployment, with installations at Charles de Gaulle and Rome Fiumicino airports among its growing portfolio.
Honghao Deng is the CEO and co-founder of Butlr, a San Francisco-based Physical AI company that uses anonymous thermal sensors to understand how spaces are occupied - without cameras or personal data. A Harvard GSD MDes graduate and MIT Media Lab researcher, Deng spun Butlr out of MIT in 2019 alongside co-founder Jiani Zeng. The company has raised over $105M in venture funding, deployed 30,000+ sensors across 22 countries, and processes 1 billion data points daily. Deng is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree (2022), a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and the inventor of 'Illusory Material' - a multi-material 3D printing breakthrough named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Best Inventions of 2021.