smart-factory
(5)
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.
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.
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.