Santa Monica, CA, Aug. 21, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UP.Labs, the venture lab pioneering AI-powered B2B software innovation for legacy industries, today unveiled its 2024 cohort of startup CEOs. These five seasoned operators will lead newly launched portfolio companies, each built around proprietary AI solutions that address high-value problems in the automotive, retail supply chain, and aviation industries.
As a venture lab purpose-built for enterprise reinvention, UP.Labs partners with established corporations to identify intractable business problems and launch software startups that combine frontier, agentic AI technology and valuable industry-specific IP to create new commercial models. The CEOs in each cohort begin as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence with industry venture labs, validating customer pain points and shaping software-based solutions before formally spinning the companies out of incubation and becoming full-fledged founders of independent businesses.
Entrepreneurs join to access UP.Labs’ proven company scaling playbook. Benefits include a paying first customer, funding from a Tier 1 venture capital firm in UP.Ventures, a collaborative network of other successful executives to support agile problem solving, alongside the potential for an exit within approximately 3 years should they execute well.
“At UP.Labs, we look for experienced operators who can understand transformative AI opportunities and scale them inside the most complex industries in the world,” said John Kuolt, Co-Founder and CEO of UP.Labs. “These five leaders are not only serial entrepreneurs with significant exits, but they are also deeply technical and live, eat, and breathe AI in their own personal tech stacks. I’m confident they’re the right people to unlock enterprise value for our partners.”
Introducing the 2025 UP.Labs CEO Cohort
UP.Labs Automotive, Backed by Porsche
Denise Chudy — CEO, ionRoad
Denise Chudy has led automotive technology companies for three decades, many as they were just getting started. Denise excels at identifying and translating technological shifts into significant market opportunities for emerging companies and their customers, a skill proven by her leadership in initiatives like Google’s automotive division launch, Cars.com’s national expansion, and LivePerson Automotive’s extension to global automakers.
Denise is leading ionRoad, which aims to create more second life opportunities for EV and hybrid batteries in both enterprise and open marketplace applications. OEMs, battery repurposing companies, recyclers, and more will benefit from ionRoad’s ability to connect all key entities in the second life battery industry, and enable them to transact in a transparent, efficient manner.
Joel Milne — CEO, AutoUnify
Joel is a veteran entrepreneur with a successful track record across enterprise software, and venture capital. He previously founded RepairSmith, IVIZE and multiple other VC-backed startups. Under Joel’s leadership AutoNation acquired RepairSmith for nearly $200M in 2023. His experience navigating data-sensitive, regulated environments makes him ideally suited to help AutoUnify lead the future of connected mobility software.
AutoUnify is solving the automotive industry’s data disconnect with a unified developer platform that enables secure, real-time integration between automotive retailers, including dealerships and repair shops, and third-party software vendors and OEMs. Its modular architecture empowers the automotive industry to accelerate app ecosystems without compromising data control.
UP.Labs Supply Chain Management & Retail, Backed by The Dufresne Group
Ben Rodier — CEO, FrontlineIQ
Ben has spent more than 20 years building and scaling commerce and sales technology companies. As Co-Founder of Salesfloor, he helped redefine omnichannel selling and enabled global brands to empower their sales teams to increase customer engagement and revenue. With a sharp eye for product-market fit and a passion for sales enablement, Ben is turning FrontlineIQ into the indispensable AI partner for enterprise sales organizations.
FrontlineIQ is an AI-powered sales intelligence for in-person sales teams. Millions of sales people in stores, showrooms, dealerships, clinics and restaurants are now getting real-time coaching, gamified goal setting, and personalized feedback. Its Coaching Co-Pilot and mobile platform turn sales managers into data-driven super-coaches and boost frontline sales productivity at scale.
David Olk — CEO, SaySo
David is a three-time founder and early-stage operator, best known for co-founding ShopKeep, a leading retail POS solution acquired by Lightspeed. He has also served as a VC, advisor, and board member for several high-growth SaaS startups. His deep understanding of retail operations and software monetization uniquely positions him to scale SaySo’s impact on bottom-line retail economics.
SaySo helps retailers reclaim lost margin by using AI to identify, price, and move unsold inventory before it hits clearance. Its data platform converts shelf-level signals into consumer intent and dynamic liquidation strategies.
UP.Labs Aviation, Backed by Alaska Airlines
Adam Houghton — CEO, Tailsight
Adam co-founded ForeFlight, the most widely adopted digital flight planning platform in aviation, which was acquired by Boeing in 2022. He scaled its engineering, data, and airline SaaS businesses, establishing himself as a thought leader in aerospace software. His unique blend of technical rigor and operational scale makes him an ideal fit to build Tailsight into the trusted data source for airline maintenance departments.
Tailsight is an AI-driven operations platform that helps aerospace firms streamline maintenance planning. By unifying fragmented data from disparate enterprise systems and surfacing real-time recommendations, it empowers maintenance departments to make faster, smarter decisions. Its machine learning engine mimics expert judgment to optimize work schedules, resource deployment, and task assignments to improve operational efficiency at scale.
These five leaders join the ranks of UP.Labs’ 2023 CEO cohort—including Jorge Borbolla (Pull Systems), David Fisch (Panorama AI), and Rakesh Hegde (Sensigo)—expanding a community of founders at the helm of AI-first companies reshaping enterprise software from the ground up.
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About UP.Labs
UP.Labs is transforming physical industries by designing, building, and investing in vertical AI startups forged to unlock substantial operational gains and deliver real enterprise value for corporate partners. The model starts where the stakes are highest – inside partner businesses tackling mission-critical problems that ripple across entire industry verticals. UP.Labs’ portfolio companies then produce investment-grade, industry-extensible software solutions which attract top-tier entrepreneurs, CEOs, and venture capital investors. To learn more, visit https://up.partners/labs.
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