Dan Ryan is the CEO and Co-Founder of VergeSense, the leading occupancy intelligence platform transforming how global enterprises manage their real estate. A serial entrepreneur with a track record in hardware-software integration, Ryan previously co-founded ByteLight (LED-based indoor positioning, acquired by Acuity Brands in 2015) before launching VergeSense in 2017 through Y Combinator. Under his leadership, VergeSense has grown to serve 200+ Fortune 500 companies across 140 million square feet in 50+ countries, raising $82.6 million including a $60M Series C in 2021. Ryan is based in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area and is recognized as a pioneer at the intersection of physical and digital worlds, building AI-powered tools that help companies make data-driven decisions about office space, sustainability, and hybrid work strategy.
Alcatraz AI builds the Rock and Rock X - AI-powered facial authentication devices that replace badges, fobs and PINs at the door. The Cupertino-based company combines edge computer vision, 3D depth sensing, and privacy-by-design encryption to authenticate people without storing their faces in the cloud, and is used by Fortune 100 firms, hyperscale AI data centers, major U.S. airports, and NFL teams.
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.
Timo Korpela is CEO of Haltian Inc. and VP of Sales for North America at Haltian, the Finnish IoT pioneer behind the Thingsee sensor platform and the 'Empathic Building' concept. Raised under the Northern Lights in Finnish Lapland and educated at Helsinki University of Technology, he bridges the precision of Nordic engineering with the deal-making culture of Silicon Valley. Operating from Palo Alto, he drives Haltian's North American growth - a market that accounts for roughly a third of the company's revenue - while negotiating global partnerships with Cisco, Microsoft, and healthcare systems across three continents.
Jennifer Nuckles is the Chairperson and CEO of R-Zero, a San Francisco-based smart building technology company that deploys UV-C light, IoT sensors, and AI to make indoor environments safer, healthier, and more energy-efficient. With 25+ years spanning consumer goods giants (Clorox), social gaming (Zynga), digital health (Doctor on Demand), and fintech (SoFi), she is one of the rare executives who has led marketing and operations at scale across radically different industries. She took the helm at R-Zero in October 2022, raised a $105M Series C, and is on a mission to fix the fact that we spend 90% of our lives inside buildings that were never designed to keep us healthy.
Mark Chung is the co-founder and CEO of Verdigris Technologies, a Mountain View-based AI company that provides circuit-level electrical intelligence for mission-critical data centers and commercial buildings. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer who spent 15 years designing chips at AMD, PA Semi (Apple), and NetLogic (Broadcom), Chung founded Verdigris in 2011 after a $560 electricity bill sparked an obsession with making buildings as transparent as spreadsheets. Today, Verdigris monitors 2+ gigawatts of peak demand across 20 million square feet of facilities for clients like T-Mobile, Verizon, NVIDIA, and Google, using 8kHz waveform sensors that detect equipment failures up to 21 days before they cause outages.
Tina D'Agostin is the CEO of Alcatraz AI, a Cupertino-based company building AI-powered facial authentication for physical access control. With 25+ years in security technology spanning Johnson Controls, Niscayah (Stanley), and executive roles at the intersection of hardware and enterprise software, she leads a company that protects over five million employees at Fortune 500 firms, data centers, airports, and stadiums - positioning Alcatraz as 'the Face ID for physical spaces.' Under her leadership, the company raised a $50M Series B in April 2026, bringing total funding to over $100 million.
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.