# Yong Hee Lee

> Yong Hee Lee is co-founder and CEO of Cuckoo, an AI interpretation and localization company in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch. He studied electrical engineering and science and technology policy at KAIST and previously worked in go-to-market roles at Korean startups. His experience organizing international conferences and technical meetups helped shape Cuckoo’s focus on context-aware business communication.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Cuckoo
- **Organizations:** Cuckoo Labs, VESSL AI, KAIST
- **Education:** Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Cuckoo Labs with Gunwoo Kim., Cuckoo selected for Y Combinator Winter 2025., Cuckoo announced a $1.8 million seed round in November 2025.

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Met future co-founder Gunwoo Kim through a KAIST student club; organized an annual international undergraduate conference together.
- **2023** — Credited as Growth Manager on VESSL AI technical tutorials and CVPR publishing.
- **2024** — Co-founded Cuckoo; product launched in July.
- **2025** — Cuckoo joined YC Winter 2025, added video localization, announced $1.8 million in seed funding, and released desktop apps.
- **2026** — Published an October product redesign covering translation, sharing and post-meeting follow-up.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Cuckoo Labs with Gunwoo Kim.
- Cuckoo selected for Y Combinator Winter 2025.
- Cuckoo announced a $1.8 million seed round in November 2025.
- Helped build a translation product used by Snowflake, PagerDuty and Weights & Biases.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — October 6: Lee announced a Cuckoo redesign with a larger translation area, desktop overlay, simpler sharing and owner-grouped action items.
- **2025-12** — December 10: announced general availability of Cuckoo desktop apps for macOS and Windows.
- **2025-11** — November 4: Cuckoo announced $1.8 million in seed investment.
- **2025-08** — August 11: Lee published the Cuckoo for Videos launch article.

## Links

- Website: https://harryyongheelee.medium.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryyongheelee/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/harryyongheelee

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/yong-hee-lee
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-11