Manifold: Drop-in robotic labor that works on Day 1

Drop-in robotic labor that works on Day 1

The US Warehouse industry spends $75bn on labor each year. Yet, only 10% of US warehouses have any form of automation, because existing robotics are too expensive and hard to integrate. Manifold deploys autonomous robots that handle picking, loading / unloading, and palletizing — priced by pick. Integration in hours. No upfront costs. No retrofitting. No need to rebuild the operation around the robot. Our mission is to make it easy for any warehouse to adopt robotics.

Active Founders

Nicolas Yeh

Founder/CEO

Founder at Manifold. Grew up in a 3rd-gen supply chain family business (major consumer products supplier to US retailers). Previously at Balyasny Asset Management covering analog semiconductors ($1B+ book). Before that, Hotel Acquisitions at Starwood Capital Group, where he sourced a $60M hotel sale and was sole analyst responsible for asset management of Extended Stay America ($7.6B JV with Blackstone). BA from UPenn.

Nicolas Yeh

Founder/CEO

Founder at Manifold. Grew up in a 3rd-gen supply chain family business (major consumer products supplier to US retailers). Previously at Balyasny Asset Management covering analog semiconductors ($1B+ book). Before that, Hotel Acquisitions at Starwood Capital Group, where he sourced a $60M hotel sale and was sole analyst responsible for asset management of Extended Stay America ($7.6B JV with Blackstone). BA from UPenn.

Joshua Ibrahim

Founder/CTO

Founder at Manifold. PhD in Applied Mathematics from Caltech. Previously Software Engineering Intern at Facebook, working on Messenger P2P services and Instagram's misinformation detection systems. MS and BS in Electrical and Systems Engineering from Penn.

Joshua Ibrahim

Founder/CTO

Founder at Manifold. PhD in Applied Mathematics from Caltech. Previously Software Engineering Intern at Facebook, working on Messenger P2P services and Instagram's misinformation detection systems. MS and BS in Electrical and Systems Engineering from Penn.

Company Launches

Manifold - Robotic labor for the supply chain industry

See original launch post

What if you could hire a robot the same way you hire a temp worker?

Nick grew up working in his family’s 3rd-generation distribution business, where he saw firsthand how much warehouses still depend on manual labor. The obvious answer should have been robotics, but for true labor replacement, existing robots were too expensive, inflexible, and difficult to deploy. As a result, most warehouses still say they’re “not ready” for automation.

Nick came together with his best friend Josh, a fellow UPenn alum and PhD at Caltech specializing in safety-critical control for robotics, to solve this problem.

Manifold is building robotic labor for the supply chain industry. Its robots perform picking jobs from start to finish faster than humans, with no upfront cost or infrastructure changes. Customers simply pay per pick, at a cost below human labor.

They’re already deploying robots to perform more than 5 million picks across multiple warehouses.

If you’re a warehouse operator, reach out to nick@manifoldindustries.ai

https://youtu.be/jU_UI0pHpBc

YC Summer 2026 Application Video