Manufacturing · San Francisco Bay Area, CA · Founded 2026 · Raised $1.6M · Formation stage
Hilstart
Autonomous Hardware Testing
Review noteYC Summer 2026 (partner Jared Friedman). Form D filings show HILstart, Inc. incorporated in Delaware in 2026: $1.08M sold of a $1.5M SAFE offering (first sale Jul 13, 3 investors) and a separate $500K SAFE offering fully sold (first sale Aug 11, 2 investors). Total below is the sum of the two filings. Source ↗
Edge
12#178 · ▼13 in 7d
Why now
- Filed Form D: $500K sold, the full offering, in SAFEs from 2 investors
Capital · Aug 24
- Listed in YC Summer 2026 under Manufacturing and Robotics
Launch · Aug 18
People
Executive Officer, Director
Founder and CEO at Hilstart. Previously Lead Mechatronics Engineer at Aquila, shooting lasers at drones to charge them. Also made FSAE race cars and electric jetboats along the way.
Executive Officer, Director
Trained gymnast. Building hardware since 15. 2x National robotics champion at 18. Before HILStart: power and thermal systems at Vessev (Flying boats) and test rigs at Halter (NZ's latest unicorn). Founding team at Aquila and built the core tech behind kilometre-scale wireless laser energy transmission across many engineering disciplines. Aquila is now a world-leading powerbeaming company, and the tech delivered the world's first 500W transfer to a drone mid-flight.
Executive Officer, Director
Founder & CTO at Hilstart. Previously Firmware Engineer at Aquila.
Founder
Making hardware easier. Past adventures all over mechanical and electrical development. Battle scars from electric motor design, accelerated lifecycle testing, mechanical structures, cooling systems, hardware test rigs, DFM, wiring harnesses, race cars and electronics debugging. Also, destructive testing (often inadvertent).
Score
Capital
× 0.78
Matched on autonomous, industrial, manufacturing, robotic
× 1.00
Almost no public footprint
× 0.85
4 named people, none from a top lab or company
21 × 0.78 × 1.00 × 0.85 × 0.85 one family only = 12