Outerport Deploys with Daikin Industries and Expands Engineering in SF and Tokyo

Manufacturing and heavy industrial companies rely on millions of 2D PDF and CAD drawings to communicate design requirements, simulate systems, quote contract work, and debug factory floors. Because multi-modal foundation models routinely fail on dense schematic drawings, engineers manually parse and annotate these files. Outerport, a San Francisco startup founded in 2024 out of Y Combinator's S24 batch, is building foundation models and software to turn those technical documents and CAD files into structured data.

In March 2026, air-conditioning manufacturer Daikin Industries selected Outerport as its core platform for extracting structured data from engineering drawings and diagrams, as reported by Yahoo Finance. Daikin, which employs more than 98,000 workers globally, deployed the platform to structure legacy engineering assets and prepare them for internal autonomous AI agents. Shohei Hido, Executive Engineer at Daikin's Technology Innovation Center, noted that internal trials on complex technical documents had struggled to achieve production accuracy before the company tested Outerport's parsing software.

Backed by Seed funding from Y Combinator, Flex Capital, and Pioneer Fund, the four-person company is scaling engineering and field operations across San Francisco and Tokyo.

Deep Tech Roots in Computer Vision and Systems

Outerport was co-founded by researchers with backgrounds spanning computer vision, graphics, and distributed systems.

Chief Executive Officer Towaki Takikawa completed his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto in 2024. He previously worked as a research scientist at NVIDIA, where he focused on computer vision and AI for 3D reconstruction and 3D foundation models, following earlier stints in robotics, systems engineering, and manufacturing.

Chief Technology Officer Allen Wang holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo. Wang previously developed LLMs and diffusion models for presentations at Tome, worked on autonomous vehicle computer vision at Embark Trucks, and handled data science and graph analytics at Meta and LinkedIn.

The startup's core stack pairs multi-modal language models with proprietary computer vision to extract vector geometry, symbols, and text from diagrams into structured JSON. This output feeds downstream workflows, such as automated design reviews, simulation setup, risk analysis, and operations and maintenance.

Product Development Across CAD, Simulation, and APAC Accounts

To expand its product beyond basic document ingestion into active design validation, Outerport is adding specialized technical talent. The team is building model-based engineering tools and domain-specific languages (DSLs) to simulate automated systems directly from digitized technical sheets.

For engineering candidates, the current hiring reflects three distinct thrusts: domain modeling, geometric graphics, and customer-site deployment.

On the modeling side, the company is hiring a Member of Technical Staff, DSL for Automation & Electrical CAD ($100,000–$300,000). The role owns the development of an electrical and automation control DSL, an interactive simulator, and an automated drawing generation system used to guide commissioning and operator training. Alongside it, the Member of Technical Staff, Process Engineering ($60,000–$200,000) brings domain expertise from chemical manufacturing, semiconductor equipment, and engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) environments to validate deliverables and scale data pipelines from hardware and simulations.

At the visual foundation level, the team is hiring a Member of Technical Staff, Computer Vision / Graphics ($100,000–$200,000) in San Francisco or Tokyo. This engineer designs geometric algorithms for vector graphics, builds interactive document processing tools, gathers training data for vision models, and writes UI visualization code for debugging.

Expansion in Tokyo

Following the Daikin deployment, Outerport is staffing up operations in Japan to support large industrial clients in the APAC region. The startup has opened a Member of Technical Staff, Tokyo Deployed ($60,000–$200,000) role to handle technical delivery across North America and APAC. This engineer acts as the primary customer point-of-contact, travels directly to factory and client sites to resolve integration issues, and routes technical requirements back to internal engineering teams.

On the commercial side, Outerport is recruiting an entry-level Business Development / Operations, Tokyo ($60,000–$200,000) lead. Based onsite in Tokyo, this hire will manage relationships with manufacturing, heavy industry, and EPC clients while driving deal planning and aligning customer requests with Outerport's product roadmap.

While the company works in-person out of its San Francisco office, several technical positions allow remote work across the United States, Japan, and Canada.

Open Roles at Outerport

See all open roles at Outerport