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Will Cao
Will (Yangxiaolu) Cao is the co-founder and CEO of Pando Bioscience (YC W23), a Watertown, Massachusetts company using generative AI and ultra-high-throughput screening to engineer better enzymes for pharmaceutical manufacturing and life-science tools. A Ph.D. scientist who switched from mechanical engineering to engineering bacteria, she published first-author papers in Cell and Nature Biotechnology and was an early employee at Ginkgo Bioworks before starting Pando in 2022.
Diagonal Therapeutics
Diagonal Therapeutics is a Watertown, Massachusetts biotech building 'clustering antibodies' - multi-specific, agonist antibodies that bind two or more cell-surface receptors at once to switch broken signaling pathways back on. Its DIAGONAL Product Engine combines computational and experimental screening to sift billions of antibody combinations for the rare ones that restore receptor activity. The lead program, DIAG723, restores dysregulated ALK1 signaling to address the root cause of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Founded by Alex Lugovskoy with Atlas Venture, the company launched in 2024 with a $128M Series A and raised an oversubscribed $125M Series B in January 2026 to push DIAG723 into the clinic.
Josh Bilenker
Josh Bilenker is the CEO and co-founder of Treeline Biosciences, a Watertown, Massachusetts biotech building precision oncology medicines. A physician by training who once reviewed cancer drugs at the FDA, he founded Loxo Oncology in 2013 and took a tumor-agnostic, genomics-first approach he likened to 'moneyball' target selection. Loxo produced three FDA-approved medicines and was bought by Eli Lilly for roughly $8 billion in 2019. In 2021 he started Treeline with former Novartis research head Jeff Engelman, and in 2026 the company agreed to merge with Standard BioTools to go public as 'Treeline Biosciences' (Nasdaq: TRLN).
Nocion Therapeutics, Inc.
Nocion Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in the Boston area developing a new class of small-molecule 'charged' sodium channel blockers - nocions - that selectively, locally, and durably silence overactive sensory neurons (nociceptors) without numbing everything else. Its lead candidate, taplucainium, is an inhaled powder aimed at refractory and unexplained chronic cough, with broader potential across itch, pain, and neurogenic inflammation. The science was born in the Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital labs of Bruce Bean and Clifford Woolf.
Tutor Intelligence
Tutor Intelligence builds AI-powered collaborative robots that pick, pack, and palletize alongside people on factory and warehouse floors. Born out of MIT's CSAIL, the company sells robots by the hour - a Robots-as-a-Service model that drops a working robot onto a line in days, not months, with no programming required. Its flagship Cassie handles infinite SKUs at up to 14 cases per minute, while Data Factory 1, a 100-robot facility in a renovated Watertown mill, trains the next generation of factory-ready robot AI on real-world data.
Josh Gruenstein
Josh Gruenstein is the co-founder and CEO of Tutor Intelligence, an MIT CSAIL spinout building AI-powered robots that work alongside people in American factories and warehouses. He leases robots by the hour instead of selling them, betting that fleet-scale learning, not bigger algorithms, is what finally puts a robot in every factory. In December 2025 the company raised a $34M Series A led by Union Square Ventures, bringing total funding to roughly $42M.