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Summary of article:
Chen Chengyang, a 22-year-old Taiwanese man, dropped out of school to start a business in the United States. He created a new industrial AI startup, Operon. They were supported by Y Combinator and completed a fundraising of 700,000 yuan, specializing in factory data collection and application.
Before he graduated from college, he invested almost all of his savings to start a business in the United States. Anderson Chen, a 22-year-old Taiwanese man, founded Operon Solutions, an industrial artificial intelligence company, and received backing from entrepreneurial accelerator Y Combinator (YC). According to Business Insider, he invested approximately 80,000 yuan, is currently not receiving a salary, and plans not to return to college to run the company full-time.
According to YC official information, Operon was founded in 2026 and is locatedsan francisco was selected into the 2026 Summer Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, with Chen Zhengyang serving as founder and CEO. The company focuses on the manufacturing and process industries and hopes to use AI to understand engineering data accumulated in factories over many years.
This business deals with documents which common people rarely come in contact with but factories cannot function without. According to YC, Operon organizes pipeline and equipment diagrams, equipment diagrams, specification sheets and scanned files into a queryable factory data model. Engineers can ask questions in everyday language and use this information to create workflows for security, compliance, and design.
This is not Chen Zhengyang’s first time in business. According to Business Insider, he was selling sneakers and running an online shipping business when he was 14 years old. During her college years, she also ran a tuition matchmaking service to find Malaysian tutors for families of international school students in Singapore. The savings invested in Operon came from these early businesses.
However, by the time Chen Zhengyang left campus, he had not yet decided to pursue industrial AI. He recalled in a Medium article published in August 2025 that he originally studied at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and went to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland as an exchange student in September 2024. After the exchange, he returned to Taiwan for an internship for half a year, and then decided to take a leave of absence from school to explore. At that time, he was still exploring directions such as education and preparation stage for further studies. Later, he chose industrial AI, which was related to his observations during his internship in the manufacturing industry.
After going to America to start a business, he also doubted himself during an interview. According to Tianxia Magazine, when Chen Zhengyang participated in the YC interview, he was asked difficult questions one after another. He was worried about his poor performance and even doubted whether he was suitable to start a business or not. But after two days he got the news of admission.
Chen Zhengyang said in a LinkedIn post forwarded by the company that Operon completed a pre-seed round of financing of 700,000 yuan with investors including YC, Xinyuan Capital and Cornerstone Venture Capital. He expects AI to be used to help more factories improve their quality, equipment and safety management capabilities.
Summary FAQ
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After studying and interning in Taiwan and abroad, he gradually confirmed that he wanted to start a business. After seeing the practical needs of the manufacturing industry, he decided to take industrial AI as his direction and moved to the United States to run Operon.
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Operon organizes piping and instrumentation diagrams, equipment diagrams, specification sheets and scanned documents into searchable data models, allowing engineers to ask questions in everyday language and support safety, regulatory and design processes.
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He first invested about 80,000 yuan of his savings, which came from early businesses such as selling sneakers, dropshipping, and matchmaking tuition since he was 14 years old. After that, Operon completed a pre-round seed financing of 700,000 yuan.
