School For Startups Radio

Yushiro Kato – Founder of CADDi – CAD Manufacturing Startup Yushiro Kato is a kind of wunderkind in Japan. And now, he’s building an empire here in the states. At 32, he’s the head of CADDi, a company that has excelled in helping companies outsource the manufacturing of challenging parts. The business works with hundreds of factories worldwide to streamline operations using the Kaizen approach and then splits profits with those factories as CADDi customers increase demand. (Forbes 30 Under 30, Forbes Top 10 Japanese Entrepreneurs of 2023, and their company made a Top 10 story of 2023 in the Chicago Business Journal). Now, CADDi has created CADDi Drawer, an AI-enabled tool to help engineers and manufacturers streamline production. Fresh on the heels of a nearly $90-million Series C round a few months ago, this company, with a U.S. HQ in Chicago, is making waves with a platform that promises to increase efficiency by 80% during the procurement process through its proprietary image analysis algorithm, automatic