Lin Yang

The landscape for how entrepreneurs build startups has changed with the rapid growth of #AI. While Silicon Valley may have changed, Plug and Play Tech Center has not. With more than 60 locations worldwide, Sunnyvale has remained our primary hub for #investing, partnerships, and events. Our Partner, George Damouny, spoke with Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Alastair Goldfisher about the impact AI in the Bay Area. In 2025 alone, we completed over 250 investments globally, 184 of which were tied to Silicon Valley companies. Read more about this shift: https://lnkd.in/g5YXmdhV Get a closer look at our global impact in 2025: https://lnkd.in/grddZdAY

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Honored to have been invited to fal and Henry Shi’s Lean AI Leaderboard Celebration Dinner, celebrating some of the leanest and fastest-growing startups in SF. Here are some of the most overwhelming trends that were discussed among high-growth companies working with small, high-output teams: 1/ Headcount is no longer used as a success metric. As Henry Ward said, “Hiring means we failed to execute and need help.” Headcount is not a flex measure anymore. People aren’t asking “How big is your team?” anymore. They’re asking “How many customers do you have?” 2/ They're finding ways to leverage AI across every function. Every engineer uses Cursor or Windsurf. Every GTM leader is in Clay. The most efficient teams are built AI-first across the board. Thank you to Henry Shi, Burkay Gur, and Gorkem Yurtseven for putting this all together!

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Episode 11 of the Summer Coworking Chronicles takes us to MassRobotics, Part 1.. We caught up with... -The Co-Founder of MassRobotics, Joyce Sidopoulos -Brian Hart, Co-Founder & CEO at Black-I Robotics, Inc. -Xinyu Wang, Co-Founder & CTO at Mito Robotics -Colleen Cronin Anderson from MassRobotics on this segment… Joyce Sidopoulos Sidopoulous, Co-Founder & Chief of Operations at MassRobotics shares.. MassRobotics is building the world’s largest innovation center for robotics. It's THE hub that people from all over the world come to because it’s where innovation in robotics happens Joyce loves the community! It’s filled with innovators, mentors who want to give back, and successful robotics companies & CEOs who return to collaborate. 👀 What should we be watching? 👀 Joyce is seeing startups in the warehouse & logistics space. There's also been a surge in healthtech, agriculture, and construction. Brian Hart, Co-Founder & CEO at Black-I Robotics, Inc. shares.. His team is building a robot worker that can move around a warehouse, pick up heavy boxes, and create a mixed case palette in real time. Their robot can put together a full mixed palette of 100 items and get it to a loading dock in ~18 minutes. Brian has built robotics companies in the Boston area for almost 20 years and leverages its ecosystem. At MassRobotics he’s been able to share information with companies using similar technology (but non-competitive) like vision systems, custom grippers, etc. 👀 What startups should we be watching? 👀 On the consumer side, look at Nutra Spin. It’s a smoothie in a can without the mess In robotics, check out Luminous Robotics, which is picking up solar voltaic rays and building solar farms with robots. Xinyu Wang, Co-Founder & CTO at Mito Robotics shares.. They're building an AI-powered intelligent robot for lab automation, focusing on cell culture. Cell culture is a manual task that's repetitive and takes up a lot of scientists times, freeing them up to focus on discovery work. Boston is the heart of both robotics and biotech, which the Mito Robotics team loves! What startups should we be watching? ReviMo is building an autonomous wheelchair. Elderly care and human support is a great use case for robotics and Aleksandr's work is worth people’s attention! Colleen Cronin Anderson at MassRobotics shares.. Colleen is responsible for building the community together and putting on events to make more connections. Their biggest event is coming up September 27th…The Robot Block Party in the Seaport. There will be tons of robots, interactive exhibits, and a robot parade! Be there!! 👀 What startups should we be watching? 👀 1.) Luminous Robotics recently was awarded a huge contract with the Australian government. 2.) Cleo Robotics just announced their new DD1 drone. Two exciting announcements (and startups) to share! The summer tour continues with MGMT Boston. Thanks to Rho and Will Panarello for supporting this series!

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Japan’s SaaS ecosystem just reached another milestone: LayerX secured a $100M Series B led by TCV. The company is building AI-driven automation tools designed to scale globally, with expansion plans in Asia and North America already in motion. This investment reflects a growing trend of global investors engaging with Japanese startups at later stages, recognizing both product excellence and the international potential of SaaS built in Japan. For founders, it’s also a signal that global scaling is no longer optional—it’s an expectation. For venture capital, the case of LayerX is a reminder of the importance of cross-border capital, strategic alignment, and talent mobility. These elements will define how Japanese SaaS companies transition from strong domestic players to global category leaders. #VentureCapital #SaaS #LayerX #JapanStartups #GlobalExpansion Details: https://lnkd.in/gF25g-uR

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AI: Capex Spending Stretch Big Tech Financials. RTZ #992 ...the comfortable financing margins start to shrink https://lnkd.in/gT_h__RW #Tech #AI @OpenAI $MSFT $GOOG $AMZN $META $NVDA $AAPL $TSLA

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During my 15 days in China, one thing stood out everywhere AI adoption is moving at lightning speed. From Chengdu to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Chongqing, startups and big companies are integrating AI into everything, especially high-tech hardware and next-gen solutions. At ByteDance, I got a glimpse of how AI is powering content, automation, and foundation models, creating products that scale globally from day one. The level of speed and ambition here is something I rarely see in India. For Indian founders, the takeaway is clear. Think bigger, move faster, and don’t be afraid to build high-tech solutions that aim for global impact. China’s ecosystem proves that AI is not just a tool, it’s a foundation for building the next generation of scalable businesses. For QuickReel it’s a reminder to always bet on big, impactful technology.

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We chose a good subject for our march Autotech Council meeting, and after this year's CES, it seems even more obvious. Our meeting on the AI Defined Vehicle will show how it's a natural next step after the Software Defined Vehicle phase that we've been in Tesla launched the Model S in 2012. Now, most carmakers have SDVs. It's time to layer on the AI in user-facing roles, and in invisible functions managing the vehicle.

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Korean deep tech startup TIRIPS secures seed funding from MYSC for its NEXA platform, an AI-powered lab automation system that digitizes nanomaterial experiments. The company plans to develop self-driving lab technology and expand into global markets with a cloud-based SaaS model.

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Today we’re launching our Physical AI Lab, led by UCLA professor and renowned researcher Bolei Zhou, who’s joining Coco as Chief AI Scientist. Bolei has spent his career advancing physical AI with 60,000+ citations and pioneering work. Now, he’s bringing that expertise to Coco. What makes this lab special is Coco’s fleet itself. Our robots run urban deliveries across the U.S. and Europe, navigating unpredictable environments (construction, pedestrians, weather, etc.). These are the kinds of real world challenges you can’t capture in simulation and that data is becoming the raw material for advancing physical AI. As we scale to 10,000+ robots in 2026, this fusion of research and deployment will define the next generation of physical AI and reimagine how goods move through cities everywhere. TechCrunch has the scoop - link in comments.

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Charles Liang + Supermicro = Pioneering the Enterprise AI Infrastructure Revolution 🌟 Since co-founding Supermicro in 1993, Charles Liang has grown the company from a small design shop into a global powerhouse at the heart of the AI hardware boom—a public tech benchmark now boasting a market cap north of $30 billion. Why Supermicro is not merely relevant—but defining in the age of AI infrastructure? /Relentless Innovation in AI Infrastructure Supermicro leads in delivering high-density, energy-efficient servers for AI workloads. With over 30 NVIDIA Blackwell–based air and liquid-cooled systems rolling out globally, Supermicro is powering the backbone of enterprise AI factories across Europe and beyond. /Modular Powerhouse: Data Center Building Blocks At the core of Supermicro’s strategy is its Data Center Building Block Solutions (DCBBS®) platform. This modular, data-center-in-a-box system simplifies AI data center deployment. /Enterprise-Scale Adoption & Eco-Conscious Deployment More than 70% of Supermicro’s revenue now stems from AI-related platforms, including air and liquid-cooled NVIDIA Blackwell GPU setups. Charles Liang isn't just a CEO—he's an engineer, an innovator, and a visionary whose modular, eco-smart blueprint is redefining AI infrastructure for the enterprise era. For anyone invested in the future of AI compute, scalable hardware, and intelligent data center design—his RAISE Summit talk with Arjun Kharpal from CNBC is unmissable. See you on the Master Stage by Anthropic at 4pm Vik Malyala | Olivier Suinat | Juan-Carlos C. | Peter Yang | Jennie Lin

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Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)(工業技術研究院, 工研院) Taiwan showcased their top spinout startups at Stanford University today. Some pretty exciting manufacturing and industrial AI technologies including Holon Robotics.

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