DeepTech Founders rebuilding how we model, monetize, and mobilize the future.
Founder Fridays (June 27, 2025): ThunderGraph, 3THIX, and Arovia are turning technical expertise into defensible platforms and solving real-world friction.
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In every investment cycle, there are flashy trends, and then there are the teams doing the real, technical, back-end work that makes those trends scalable.
This week, we’re highlighting three founders tackling invisible friction in deep engineering, embedded fintech, and advanced hardware, places most investors overlook until it’s too late.
Why now? The tools, cost curves, and user demands have shifted. What used to be hard (or impossible) is suddenly possible, and these founders are turning that edge into momentum.
🧠 The Builders Behind ThunderGraph
ThunderGraph is redefining how complex engineering systems are modeled, validated, and delivered. Let’s meet the two founders leading that transformation.
Echo Wu – Co-Founder & CEO
Echo Wu brings a strategic lens to technical problem-solving, pairing deep systems thinking with sharp market intuition. As a first-generation immigrant founder, she’s focused on building high-trust tools that engineering teams are eager to adopt.
She has led ThunderGraph’s early market design, conducting interviews to shape the platform’s roadmap and positioning. Today, she leads go-to-market, capital strategy, and customer development, bridging the gap between technical rigor and commercial execution.
Lloyd Michael Huang – Co-Founder & CTO
Lloyd Michael Huang holds a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from Georgia Tech, where his research focused on applying machine learning to advanced reactor design. He’s led AI teams in the nuclear sector, built optimization tools still in use by the U.S. Navy, and developed RAG-based document intelligence systems at TerraPower.
At ThunderGraph, he’s building a platform that fuses AI, graph intelligence, and SysML v2. Enabling faster, traceable, and more explainable model-based systems engineering.
Traction & Milestones
Live beta deployments with Northrop Grumman, GM Super Cruise, and Lockheed Martin
Addressing a $38B+ digital engineering market, growing 15.3% annually through 2033
Built natively for SysML v2, giving the team a clear first-mover advantage as adoption accelerates
Together, Wu and Huang are driven by a shared mission: to equip engineering teams with intelligent, trustworthy tools that reduce rework, accelerate delivery, and manage complexity, without the inefficiencies of legacy workflows or the noise of overhyped AI.
📎 Investor Deck | One-Pager | Meet the Team | Book an Intro Call
🎮 Chris Chen, Co-Founder of 3thix
Chris Chen built 3thix to solve the pain points he knows firsthand: scattered vendors, regulatory friction, and complex integrations. With 20 years in fintech, including time as CTO at Wyre, he’s now leading a backend that gives game developers plug-and-play access to payments, fraud tools, and wallets.
3thix is also believed to hold the only SEC “No Action” letter for blockchain-based user tracking in games, helping developers launch with built-in compliance.
Traction & Milestones
$3M non-dilutive grant awarded by the Avalanche Foundation to accelerate platform adoption
Strategic partnership with Xsolla, a global game payments leader processing $100B+ annually
Acquired POQ, adding Unity-verified SDKs, tournament tech, and expanded developer reach
Chen’s mission is simple: give developers a plug-and-play financial stack that lets them focus on building games, not navigating regulation.
📎 Investor Deck | One-Pager | Company LinkedIn | Book an Intro Call
🧳 Alexander Wesley, Co-Founder of AROVIA
Alexander Wesley is leading the charge to make display technology radically more portable. As cofounder and CEO of Arovia, Alex helped invent and commercialize Splay, the world’s first fully collapsible large portable display, powered by a patented flexible light diffuser.
With a background in optical systems engineering at Raytheon and dual degrees in optics and entrepreneurship from the University of Rochester, Alex brings both technical depth and business acumen to frontier hardware. He’s spearheading Arovia’s expansion beyond consumer tech into sectors like defense, solar, and automotive, where their core IP is being explored for new applications.
Traction & Milestones
$1.6M in revenue with only 5 months of inventory
A $10M+ sales pipeline, including enterprise and government prospects
13 granted patents and recognition from CES and the R&D 100 Awards
Alex continues to drive Arovia’s growth as they raise capital to scale production and reduce COGS while expanding B2B and B2G channels.
📎 Investor Deck | Company LinkedIn | Book an Intro Call
🏁 Wrap-Up
From deep system modeling, full-stack Web3 monetization, and portable display tech; these founders are building for the future that’s quietly arriving behind the scenes.
This week’s founders remind us that the most transformative tech doesn’t shout, it builds. Stay tuned for next week’s VC insights and Founder Stories!
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