smart-factory
(14)
Auk Industries
A Singapore startup wants to be the 'Fitbit for machines' - snapping cheap sensors onto any factory line and turning decades-old equipment into a live data feed in days, not months.
Yoochun Kim
Yoochun Kim (Kim Yoo-cheon) is the founder and CEO of YC Corporation, a Seoul-based digital transformation company he started on April 1, 2022. As an authorized Autodesk partner, YC supplies CAD, CAM, MES and PLM software plus hardware to small and mid-sized Korean manufacturers - the metal shops, tool makers and injection molders that most smart-factory programs skip. Kim built the company to over 7 billion won in annual revenue in roughly two years, taking no outside investment and funding growth entirely through solution and service work.
Yih Lin Teh
Yih Lin Teh is the co-founder and CEO of Axross (YC W22), a Singapore-based startup building AI-driven autonomous HVAC control systems that cut energy use and operating costs for factories and semiconductor plants across Southeast Asia. An econometrician turned climate tech entrepreneur with roots at LSE and MIT and stints across three continents, Teh returned to ASEAN to make the region's manufacturing sector greener and more competitive.
YC Corporation
YC Corporation is a Seoul-based digital transformation company that helps small and mid-sized Korean manufacturers go digital. As an official Autodesk partner, it supplies and consults on CAD/CAM/PLM software (Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Inventor, PowerMill), builds its own YC Smart Line MES, and sells the hardware - CNC routers, laser markers, 3D printers and IoT sensors - to run it. Founded in 2022 and bootstrapped, the company reached roughly 7 billion won in revenue by mid-2024 by focusing on shops that earlier smart-factory programs overlooked.
3i Inc.
3i Inc. is a Seoul-based spatial AI company that turns physical spaces into interactive digital twins. Founded in 2017, it operates two brands: Beamo, an enterprise digital twin platform used to remotely inspect and manage mission-critical facilities like data centers and factories, and Pivo, a consumer AI-powered auto-tracking pod for content creators. Backed by a $24M Series A led by SV Investment, the company holds dozens of technology patents in computer vision, 3D scanning, and SLAM.
Humatics
Humatics is a Waltham, Massachusetts technology company building microlocation systems - hardware and software that pinpoint the position of people, vehicles, and machines to millimeter and centimeter precision. Combining industrial-grade ultra-wideband radio with inertial sensors, GNSS, and analytics software, its platform serves two markets: industrial automation and robotics through the Milo Microlocation System, and rail and transit through the Humatics Rail Navigation System. Founded in 2015 by MIT professor David Mindell and industry veteran Gary Cohen, the company works with partners including Siemens Mobility and Hitachi Rail on projects such as the New York MTA subway signaling upgrade.
EdgeCross
EdgeCross (엣지크로스) is a South Korean industrial AIoT company that turns ordinary factory machines into 'smart machines' without ripping out existing equipment. Its MODLINK edge devices bolt onto CNC machines, compressors, robots and other gear to stream live data, while its MachineManager SaaS and LLM-powered MachineGPT let operators monitor, self-diagnose and literally chat with their machinery in plain language. Founded in 2015 as VITCON and rebranded EdgeCross in 2022, the company says more than 8,000 machines now run its devices, generating roughly 3.2GB of operational data per day.
Superb AI
Superb AI is a computer vision AI company that builds an end-to-end MLOps and DataOps platform, letting teams label, curate, train, and deploy vision models on images, video, and 3D LiDAR data. Founded in 2018 and a Y Combinator alum, it uses AI-assisted automation to shrink the slow, manual work of preparing training data, and serves enterprise customers across autonomous driving, manufacturing, security, and public sector from offices in San Mateo and Seoul.
CREAN®
CREAN, Inc. is an Austin, Texas-based aerospace engineering and Smart Factory company that supplies hands-on engineering services and manufacturing-optimization programs to space, defense, and commercial clients. Founded in 2002 by James and Jennifer Crean, the firm fields teams of aerospace subject-matter experts who help customers move systems from concept through full-scale production while modernizing factory operations. CREAN is also developing CelestNet, a proposed lunar communications and navigation network, following its 2023 acquisition of Aquarian Space.
Webee
Webee is a Silicon Valley industrial IoT and AI company that lets manufacturers, food and beverage producers, and agriculture operators connect their machines, sensors, and data without writing code. Its no-code IIoT platform pairs wireless sensors and LoRaWAN connectivity with an AI engine called SOFIA to deliver real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, OEE tracking, and sustainability analytics - taking projects from proof-of-concept to production around 10x faster than traditional integrations.
James Crean
James Crean is the co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer (also serving as President/CTO) of CREAN Inc, an Austin, Texas aerospace engineering and smart factory firm he started in 2002 with his wife Jennifer. A former satellite systems engineer and program manager at Hughes Space & Communications and Boeing - where he worked on DirecTV, NASA's TDRSS and other communications and weather satellites, and built the Lean Six Sigma group for Boeing Satellites - Crean now leads a team of 600-plus aerospace and defense engineers and champions CREAN's AI-enabled Smart Factory Operating System (SFOS), which aims to make American high-mix manufacturing fast, flexible and competitive enough to bring production home from overseas.
Cellares
Cellares is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) for cell therapy. Its Cell Shuttle - a fully automated, high-throughput platform roughly the size of a small conference room - replaces a warren of manual labs with one box that can run 16 patient batches in parallel, cutting labor and facility footprint by about 90 percent.
Fabian Gerlinghaus
Fabian Gerlinghaus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cellares, a South San Francisco biotech company building the world's first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) for cell therapy. An aerospace engineer turned life-science entrepreneur, he co-founded Cellares in 2019 after spotting a critical gap: FDA-approved CAR-T therapies were sitting ready while patients died on waitlists because manufacturing couldn't scale. His Cell Shuttle platform — a fully automated, factory-in-a-box system processing 16 patient batches simultaneously — has attracted $630M in funding, a $380M partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb, and FDA's Advanced Manufacturing Technology designation. TIME magazine named it one of 2025's most important inventions.
Lucas Funes
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.