yi-tunnel
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SandStar AI Retail
SandStar AI Retail is a retail-technology company that uses computer vision, deep learning and big-data analytics to power cashierless, autonomous shopping. Founded in 2017 as YI Tunnel and rebranded to SandStar after a 2020 Series B+ round, it builds AI vending machines, pure-vision unmanned stores and smart-store analytics that recognize what shoppers pick up - no RFID tags, barcodes or sensors required - and automatically generate the bill when they walk out. Its systems are deployed across roughly 30 countries and serve dozens of global brands and Fortune 500 operators, including a Coca-Cola Smart Lounge in Beijing.
Yili Wu
Yili Wu is the founder and CEO of SandStar (formerly YI Tunnel), a computer-vision company that turns ordinary shops, shelves and vending machines into checkout-free, self-analyzing retail. A first-generation graduate of Tsinghua University's School of Software, he spent roughly eight years selling enterprise software at Oracle and IBM before betting that brick-and-mortar retail could be digitized the way e-commerce already had been. He founded the company in 2016, sold his first big contracts top-down to Fortune 500 headquarters in the US and Europe, and grew SandStar into a business operating across a dozen countries with dual bases in Beijing and Charlotte, North Carolina.