# Yibiao Zhao

> Yibiao Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of ISEE, an MIT spin-off in Cambridge, Massachusetts that builds self-driving yard trucks powered by a 'humanistic' AI grounded in cognitive science. A UCLA PhD in computer vision and former MIT postdoc in Joshua Tenenbaum's Computational Cognitive Science Group, Zhao bet that machines need common sense, not just pattern recognition, to navigate the messy real world. ISEE became the first company to run fully autonomous operations in logistics yards, completing more than 10,000 self-driving trailer moves for customers like Maersk and Lazer Spot, and raised $40 million in a 2022 Series B led by Founders Fund.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at ISEE
- **Organizations:** ISEE, MIT (former), UCLA (former)
- **Nationality:** United States (originally from China)
- **Education:** PhD, Computer Vision, UCLA, Postdoctoral research, Cognitive Robotics (Computational Cognitive Science Group, advised by Joshua Tenenbaum), MIT
- **Known for:** Co-founded ISEE, the first company to achieve fully autonomous operations with self-driving yard trucks, Led ISEE to more than 10,000 completed fully autonomous trailer moves at customer sites, Raised $40M Series B led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), bringing total funding to roughly $70M

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Completed PhD in computer vision at UCLA
- **2015-2017** — Postdoctoral research at MIT under Professor Joshua Tenenbaum, focused on cognitive robots and common-sense reasoning
- **2017** — Co-founded ISEE with Debbie Yu and Chris Baker as an MIT spin-off; featured by MIT Technology Review for 'giving machines a sense of imagination'
- **2018** — Outfitted first yard truck and semi-truck with ISEE's autonomous driving system; pivoted toward logistics
- **2021** — Spoke at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital on warehouse and logistics automation
- **2022** — ISEE raised $40M Series B led by Founders Fund (with Maersk Growth, Eniac Ventures, New Legacy), reaching $70M total funding; surpassed 10,000 autonomous trailer moves
- **2024** — Continued scaling ISEE's autonomous yard-truck deployments and debuted AI-powered trailer auto-coupling

## Achievements

- Co-founded ISEE, the first company to achieve fully autonomous operations with self-driving yard trucks
- Led ISEE to more than 10,000 completed fully autonomous trailer moves at customer sites
- Raised $40M Series B led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), bringing total funding to roughly $70M
- Signed major customers including Maersk and Lazer Spot, the largest yard operator of distribution centers in North America
- Named to MIT Technology Review coverage for pioneering common-sense AI for autonomous driving
- Highly cited researcher: ~2,800+ citations, h-index 22, including the widely cited 'Multi-agent tensor fusion for contextual trajectory prediction'
- Co-chaired interdisciplinary workshop series at CVPR and CogSci conferences

## Latest updates

- **2022-11** — ISEE raised $40M Series B led by Founders Fund, reaching ~$70M total funding and 10,000+ autonomous trailer moves.
- **2024-06** — ISEE debuted an AI-powered trailer auto-coupling system for autonomous yard trucks and continued expanding deployments.

## Links

- Website: https://www.isee.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yibiaozhao
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/iSee_AI
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/iseeai

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/yibiao-zhao
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-11