Noelle So is Co-Founder and CTO of HERA (YC S26), an AI-powered design review platform automating pre-production quality checks for heavy manufacturers.

Noelle earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington, where she also served as Director of Fundraising for the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and conducted undergraduate research at THINKLab.

Growing up in an industrial park her family runs in the Philippines, Noelle spent her life on factory floors and at 19 built a water-treatment facility that added 40 L/s of capacity to the park.

Prior to HERA, Noelle interned as a Product and Engineering Intelligence Intern at Enstack and as an Industrial Engineering Intern at The Carmelray Group, and was an incubatee at the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at UW.

HERA, backed by Y Combinator, targets aerospace, semiconductor, medical device, and pressure vessel manufacturers, addressing an industry-wide problem where American manufacturers lose an estimated $285,000 annually in poor quality costs per $10M in revenue.