{"id":"3a673c16-44ac-4af5-bdd5-93ce1866ffb8","slug":"yibiao-zhao","name":"Yibiao Zhao","bioBrief":"Co-founder and CEO of ISEE AI, an MIT spinout building autonomous yard trucks for logistics operations. Earned a PhD in computer vision from UCLA (2011–2015), then completed a postdoc at MIT under Joshua Tenenbaum focused on computational cognitive science and machine imagination. In 2017 he co-founded ISEE with Debbie Yu and Chris Baker, betting on theory of mind — the human knack for inferring others' intentions — as the missing piece of autonomous driving. ISEE has logged 10,000+ fully autonomous trailer moves, signed customers including Maersk and Lazer Spot, and raised $40M Series B led by Founders Fund. Zhao has 2,800+ Google Scholar citations and an h-index of 22.","priorExits":null,"nationality":"Chinese-American","verificationPosture":"verified","aliases":[],"sources":[{"url":"https://www.therobotreport.com/isees-yard-automation-solution-brings-in-40m/","title":"ISEE's yard automation solution brings in $40M","sourceName":"The Robot Report"},{"url":"https://yespress.io/yibiao-zhao","label":"YesPress profile","title":"Yibiao Zhao — The Mind Behind ISEE's Self-Driving Common Sense"},{"url":"https://www.isee.ai/about","label":"ISEE AI about page","title":"About — ISEE AI"},{"url":"https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/11/07/3894/yibiao-zhao-is-giving-machines-a-sense-of-imagination/","label":"MIT Technology Review profile","title":"Yibiao Zhao Is Giving Machines a Sense of Imagination"},{"url":"https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GZbguukAAAAJ&hl=en","label":"Google Scholar profile","title":"Yibiao Zhao — Google Scholar"}],"reviewStatus":"reviewed","createdAt":"2026-08-09T02:17:30.831Z","updatedAt":"2026-08-11T15:11:11.528Z","educations":[],"companyRoles":[{"id":"6628c8f6-3fa6-4f44-aa4c-c386df600e7d","personId":"3a673c16-44ac-4af5-bdd5-93ce1866ffb8","companyId":"2af11c59-edc2-48ed-a695-370eb526be83","role":"founder","roleTitle":"CEO & Co-founder","startDate":null,"endDate":null,"currentRole":true,"roleBasis":"verified_secondary","displayOrder":null,"createdAt":"2026-08-09T02:17:31.598Z","company":{"slug":"isee-ai","name":"ISEE AI"}}],"boardRoles":[],"investorRoles":[],"foundings":[{"id":"1a024a2c-4332-479d-825f-03b4b7c7baaa","personId":"3a673c16-44ac-4af5-bdd5-93ce1866ffb8","companyId":"2af11c59-edc2-48ed-a695-370eb526be83","foundingDate":"2017-01-01T00:00:00.000Z","cofounderStatus":"cofounder","stillAtCompany":true,"createdAt":"2026-08-11T15:11:12.748Z","company":{"slug":"isee-ai","name":"ISEE AI"}}]}