text-to-3d
(2)
Simon Song
Simon Song (Yachen Song) is the founder and CEO of Tripo AI (registered as VAST), a company building large-scale, general-purpose 3D foundation models. Born in 1997 in Hangzhou, he studied philosophy and Middle East politics at Johns Hopkins, worked in the CEO's office at SenseTime, and co-founded the Chinese AI unicorn MiniMax before starting VAST in 2023 shortly after Google's DreamFusion showed text-to-3D was possible. A self-described gamer and anime fan, Song wants to let anyone create 3D content with zero barriers and zero cost, and has grown Tripo Studio past 6.5 million users with clients including Tencent, Sony, Microsoft and Pop Mart.
Gregory Mark
Gregory Mark is a three-time founder and MIT-trained aerospace engineer who is rebuilding how physical things get made. After inventing continuous carbon fiber 3D printing and taking Markforged from a garage idea to a $2.1B public company, he launched Backflip AI in 2024, a generative AI tool that turns text, sketches, and scans into 3D-printable, manufacturable models. Backflip raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz, with angels including Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott and 'Attention Is All You Need' co-author Ashish Vaswani.