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Visual AI for factories

Maive automates aerospace compliance paperwork required on the manufacturing shop floor. We use cameras and AI to automatically fill federally-required paperwork, reducing the risk of companies being unable to sell their products and increasing factory throughput. Users have told us the paperwork required for the F-35 fighter jet weighs more than the jet itself! The government requires a record for each of the 1.5 million parts in the jet, including what shop-floor workers do to each part and when they do it. Automating paperwork by interpreting human actions with cameras is hard. Doing this at the edge and inside secure aerospace environments is harder. We fine-tune the latest vision language models to solve what was previously impossible. Manufacturers lose millions when compliance paperwork has errors because it can freeze their ability to sell the product for months. Leaving this task to shop floor workers is both incredibly risky to the company and tedious for the employees. Compliance paperwork is just the beginning. We want to propel American manufacturing into the AI era. America is facing a serious problem: there’s $400B being invested to onshore manufacturing, but there’s simultaneously a projected 15% gap in workers needed due to an aging workforce. We’re on a mission to solve this by building the first AI native software for the shop floor. Our vision is to intelligently connect people, robots, and data to 10x today’s manufacturing capacity.
Maive
Founded:2025
Team Size:2
Status:
Active
Location:San Francisco
Group Partner:Aaron Epstein
Active Founders

David Tondreau, Founder

David is the co-founder and CEO of Maive. He started his career as a manufacturing engineer at Rolls-Royce where he once uncovered quality issues due to missing paperwork that stopped production for a week. After obtaining a Masters in Engineering from UC Berkeley, David spent five years at Dexterity AI, a unicorn robotics startup. He began as a software engineer and ended as a senior manager leading product engineering. David holds 15 patents spanning robotics and aerospace engineering.
David Tondreau
David Tondreau
Maive

Will Cray, Founder

Will is the co-founder and CTO of Maive. Previously, Will was the Machine Learning and Computer Vision tech lead at Dexterity, a unicorn robotics company. Before Dexterity, Will founded his own computer vision and machine learning startup while pursuing a Master’s in Machine Learning at UT Austin. He started his career at Intel as a software engineer on their autonomous driving platform. At 13, Will founded a business repairing broken Xbox 360’s and selling them on eBay.
Will Cray
Will Cray
Maive
Company Launches
Maive ⚙️ AI-Native Factory Ops Platform
See original launch post ›

Brief

Maive is building the first AI factory operations platform, eliminating pen-and-paper workflows for factories around the world.

Demo

Maive Launch Video

America’s Situation

America is attempting to rapidly onshore manufacturing. However, many factories still rely on pen-and-paper processes, which hinder factory throughput, hide inefficiencies, and create unpredictable costs. While David was an aerospace manufacturing engineer, he uncovered missing compliance data hidden due to a data silo. It forced them to shut down the factory for a week until they fully resolved the issue. Oh… and this was in a state-of-the-art facility! The problem is that each factory is unique, but software solutions are one-size-fits all.

Enter Maive

Maive is the first AI-native manufacturing execution system (MES). We're starting with automating aerospace compliance paperwork for assemblers. Using a camera and AI, Maive detects process steps and tracks tool usage, boosting production by eliminating manual data entry and reducing compliance risks. Beyond paperwork, Maive will empower factory operators and industrial engineers—who best understand their firm’s unique needs—to customize their factory’s software without coding. Maive is modernizing domestic production and paving the way for the onshoring of manufacturing.

Asks

  1. If you want to use AI to innovate your facility then visit us at maive.ai or reach out at founders@maive.ai
  2. Intros to aerospace manufacturers
  3. Intros manufacturers with people-heavy operations
  4. Intros to investors that are familiar with the space

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