Tim Li is Co-Founder and CEO of DeepReach AI, a YC-backed (S26) Physical AI data infrastructure company building the network that connects frontier AI labs with diverse, real-world human skill data captured by local experts worldwide.

A UC Berkeley alumnus with a B.S. in Economics and Computer Science, Tim has spent 20+ years at the intersection of AI, workforce infrastructure, and cross-border operations.

Tim believes the primary bottleneck in robotics is not hardware but data representation and model performance, and that structural blue-collar labor shortages across the US and Europe can be solved through Physical AI.

Prior to DeepReach, Tim founded HireIO, a cross-border staffing platform that grew to $15M in annual revenue, and Talex.ai, an AI-powered expert network spanning 70,000 contributors across ten countries for LLM data annotation.

Within just three months of launch, DeepReach collected nearly 150,000 real-world skill clips, and the platform is rapidly scaling its global network of local data entrepreneurs across warehouses, farms, kitchens, and repair shops.