About Us
About Maihem
At Maihem, our mission is to empower every manufacturer, no matter their scale, to invent and build anything using intelligent robots.
We are witnessing the start of a new industrial revolution—an era of rapid innovation and advanced manufacturing powered by AI and robotics. We aim to lead this shift by putting these tools into the hands of every manufacturer, ensuring the power to invent and build at scale isn’t a privilege of the few.
But this era of abundance depends on solving a systemic labor crisis. For any economy to advance its industry and secure its supply chains, it must address the work that no longer attracts a human workforce. We are building AI to handle the dull, dirty, and dangerous. By offloading the hazardous and the mundane to intelligent machines, we empower manufacturers to compete globally while driving prosperity locally. In doing so, we enable the creation of new, purposeful jobs—ensuring that the future of innovation remains human-centric, boundless, and accessible to all.
We are:
- Backed by Y Combinator and founders of PayPal, Affirm, Slack – with a $6M seed round. Scout investments by Sequoia, a16z, Accel, and Kleiner Perkins.
- Founding team of AI PhDs and previous startup CTOs – everyone has a founder/CTO background.
- Building with real industry partners from the start – focused on shipping robotic solutions for real-world deployment in record time.
Founding Team
Max Ahrens (Founder & CEO): ML PhD + Postdoc (Oxford University); led AI research projects with the Alan Turing Institute and UK Ministry of Defence; ex-McKinsey.
Simon White (Founding Software Engineer): former YC startup founder/CTO; ex-defence systems engineer.
Joel Kang (Founding Product Engineer): former AI startup founder/CTO; ex-LinkedIn; product-minded engineer focused on shipping end-to-end systems.
Our Culture
- Nerdy and Intellectually Athletic: We dive deep into first principles and embrace heterodox thinking to solve the hardest technical problems.
- Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: We debate with data and logic, then commit fully.
- Continuous Improvement: Direct feedback, low ego, high trust, high growth.
- Outcome Obsession: Results over activity. You own your path and deliver high-impact results.
- Innovation Through Diversity of Thought: We seek diverse perspectives and backgrounds to build innovative, world-class solutions.