{"id":109472,"title":"Maingen: Simulations of real industrial operations, so agents can run the physical world","tagline":"Long horizon RL environments for the $5 trillion industrial economy","body":"Hello everyone!\n\nPhillip and David here, founders of Maingen (YC S26).\n\n**TLDR: AI is moving to the industrial world. Maingen builds RL environments for industrials (a $5 trillion slice of the US economy) so frontier labs can train models that actually run factories.**\n\n**Problem**:\n\nWe believe the next capabilities frontier is the physical world: operating factories, power plants, and industrial infrastructure. But that data doesn't exist on the internet, but rather as tacit knowledge inside enterprises, on operations desks, and in CMMS systems and vendor portals.\n\n**What we do:**\n\n\u003chttps://youtu.be/jE5HtSiAqxE\u003e\n\nWe embed with operators in these industries and translate their decision making process into RL environments labs can train.\n\n**Our first public benchmark evaluates whether agents can run a solar portfolio [solarbench.maingen.ai](http://solarbench.maingen.ai).** We’re continuing in other areas like factories, and we’re already working with frontier labs.\n\n**Who we are**\n\nThe founders Phillip Yan and David Yang have previously built RL environments, worked in the energy industry, shipped software powering 150 million+ TPV, and have been cited by Anthropic.\n\n**Get Involved**\n\nMaingen is looking for researchers and industrial operators to help shape its next environments. We’d love to hear from you if you:\n\n1. Work on research on long-horizon **agents, RL environments, or physical-world capabilities**.\n2. Run operations at an industrial site or can introduce the team to someone who does\n\nReach out at [founders@maingen.ai](mailto:founders@maingen.ai)! We're always down for a coffee!\n\nThanks,\n\nPhillip and David","slug":"STg-maingen-simulations-of-real-industrial-operations-so-agents-can-run-the-physical-world","created_at":"2026-08-07T16:00:00.073Z","updated_at":"2026-09-19T04:47:34.160Z","total_vote_count":5,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/STg-maingen-simulations-of-real-industrial-operations-so-agents-can-run-the-physical-world","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":32157,"name":"Maingen","slug":"maingen","url":"https://www.maingen.ai/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/2eb59fa1eb6f59fafb938607c641276931a20aef.png","batch":"Summer 2026","industry":"Industrials","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","B2B","Energy","Big Data","AI"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/32157"}}