Removing the Hardware Bottlenecks That Hold Physical AI Back
AI for hardware; physical-AI deployment; early-stage building
Speaker
Anson Yu
Founder and President
Normal
Biography
Anson Yu is founder and president of Normal, a San Francisco company that Y Combinator describes as an applied research lab for hardware design. Normal was founded in 2025 and its current YC profile lists a four-person team. The company’s launch material describes software for automating hardware certification, including testing roadmaps, laboratory coordination and technical documentation for products such as drones and robots. Yu’s background includes engineering at Waterloo, Notion and Fuse, connecting software development with the practical constraints of bringing physical products to market.