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.
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.
MaintainX is a mobile-first, AI-powered maintenance and asset management platform (CMMS/EAM) used by frontline industrial teams to replace paper work orders, prevent equipment downtime, and run safer, more predictable operations. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, it serves 11,000+ companies and manages over 11 million assets across manufacturing, facilities, food & beverage and distribution.
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.
Aperia Technologies is a Hayward, California hardware-and-software company whose Halo Tire Inflator and Halo Connect platform keep commercial truck tires at the right pressure using only the wheel's rotation. Founded in 2010 by Stanford-trained engineers Josh Carter and Brandon Richardson, the company helps fleets cut fuel use, prevent blowouts, and reduce roadside breakdowns across billions of miles of freight.
Raptor Maps builds the operating system for utility-scale solar. Its cloud platform combines drone thermography, digital twins, AI anomaly detection, and asset-performance analytics so solar owners, operators, and OEMs can find faults, plan maintenance, and squeeze more energy out of every panel across hundreds of sites.
Sight Machine is an industrial AI company that turns the messy, unstructured exhaust of factory floors into a single live model of production. Its Manufacturing Data Platform connects machines, lines and plants - then runs AI on top so Global 500 manufacturers can see, decide and act in real time.
Verdigris is a Mountain View-based AI and IoT company that turns raw electrical data into actionable intelligence for data centers, commercial buildings, and industrial facilities. By clamping high-frequency sensors onto electrical circuits and running proprietary AI algorithms on the resulting waveform data, Verdigris gives facility operators real-time visibility into energy consumption, power quality, and equipment health - detecting failures before they happen, recovering stranded capacity, and driving 20-50% reductions in energy spend. Founded in 2011, the company serves Fortune 500 customers including T-Mobile, Verizon, and NVIDIA across 17 countries.
Shrinath Acharya is the CEO and co-founder of Excelfore Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based automotive IoT company pioneering over-the-air (OTA) software updates and vehicle-to-cloud connectivity for software-defined vehicles. With 25+ years in technology spanning mobile, automotive, and enterprise software, he has built Excelfore into a globally recognized platform trusted by 20+ automotive OEMs including Audi, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, and VinFast. His eSync OTA platform is deployed across millions of vehicles worldwide, and under his leadership Excelfore has earned Frost & Sullivan's 2024 Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award.
Amrit Robbins is the CEO and co-founder of Axiom Cloud, a San Jose-based AI-powered refrigeration management software company serving grocery chains and cold storage operators. A Stanford-trained engineer and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus, Robbins previously co-founded Axiom Exergy — a hardware-first thermal energy storage company — before pivoting to software in 2020 with Axiom Cloud. His work addresses refrigerant leaks, which rank #4 on Project Drawdown's climate impact list, with a platform that requires no new hardware, deploys remotely, and earns payback in under a year.
Dr. Christopher Cuong T. Nguyen is CEO and Co-Founder of Aitomatic, a Silicon Valley-based Industrial AI company advancing what he calls 'Knowledge-First AI' - the conviction that decades of human domain expertise must be encoded alongside data, not replaced by it. A Stanford PhD and UC Berkeley summa cum laude graduate, his four-decade arc runs from building Intel's first flash memory transistors to launching Google Apps as founding Engineering Director, co-founding HKUST's Computer Engineering program, and helping connect Vietnam to the internet. Today he leads Aitomatic in deploying Small Specialist Agents for semiconductor, energy, and manufacturing industries, and sits on the Steering Committee of The AI Alliance.
Lucas Funes is the CEO and Co-Founder of Webee, a Silicon Valley-based Industrial IoT and AI platform company he built from Córdoba, Argentina to the global stage. With an engineering background spanning electronics and telecommunications, and a Master's in Innovation Technology, he has spent over two decades pioneering enterprise software and connected hardware solutions. Webee's patented no-code IIoT platform lets manufacturers deploy AI-driven monitoring - covering machine health, energy, water, and emissions - in hours rather than months, without writing a single line of code. A Stanford Latino Entrepreneur and recognized thought leader in Industry 5.0 digital transformation, Funes is on a mission to make complex industrial technology accessible to businesses of every size.