Meet Keven Wang, CEO and Co-founder of UnitX

Keven Wang, CEO and Founder of UnitX

Keven Wang’s journey began in China and took an unexpected turn when he came to the United States as a high school exchange student. What was supposed to be a one-year stay became a life-changing chapter after his American host family invited him to remain with them. Nineteen years later, Keven has lived more than half his life in the U.S., stayed close with the family that welcomed him, and built a career around a lifelong love of making things.

That instinct to build started early: Lego robotics, wooden model airplanes, soldering circuit boards, and taking apart radios just to understand how they worked. Today, as CEO of UnitX, Keven is channeling that curiosity into AI vision systems for factories, helping manufacturers inspect products with more accuracy, speed, and intelligence. We sat down with Keven to talk about his path from China to the U.S., the lessons he learned from his parents, the leap into entrepreneurship, and why he believes ambition — not resources — is the real limit.

Sam: Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Keven: I was born in China and came to the U.S. as an exchange student for high school. I was supposed to return after one year. However, my American host family and I enjoyed each other’s company so much that they offered me the chance to stay with them after that first year.

That was 19 years ago. I’ve lived more than half of my life in the U.S. now. I’m still in contact with my American host family. They even came to my wedding.

Sam: What were you like as a kid, and what did your parents think or hope you would grow up to be?

Keven: I loved building things with my hands: Lego robotics, wooden model airplanes, soldering PCBs. My mom was a mechanical engineer at an air conditioner factory, and to this day she is the most passionate person I’ve ever met. She had a deep appreciation for the everyday physical products in our lives, and she helped me appreciate how they get made: the rounded corners of a wooden desk, the matte surface finish of an anodized laptop enclosure, the minimalistic geometric patterns on a clothing fabric.

Things got tense at home when I took apart my dad’s favorite radio out of curiosity. But he forgave me. My parents had very few expectations of me in the traditional sense. Instead of sending me to math after-school classes like other parents, they sent me to model airplane classes. That really built my passion for building things.

Sam: Was entrepreneurship seen as a viable path in your family, or did you have to break away from traditional expectations to pursue it?

Keven: My parents were extremely open-minded. They didn’t expect me to follow a certain path, and I’m grateful for that. They did not pursue entrepreneurship themselves.

That said, my mom is the most passionate person in the world and deeply in love with life. She is an inspiration for me to never settle for mediocrity and to always get better. One night, I was so bored from doing homework that my handwriting became terrible. My mom got home late from work after dinner, walked up to my desk, and saw my handwriting. Without saying a single word, she tore apart my notebook with my homework in it. I was in shock as I watched hundreds of pieces of paper falling from the sky with my handwriting on them. Then I realized I had to get better.

Sam: Walk me through your college years and early career. Looking back, what was the most important accidental lesson you learned that still serves you today?

Keven: To be multidisciplinary. When I was in college, I spent the majority of my time in student organizations and pursuing business ideas. I started small by helping an entrepreneurship group put together speaker events. Then the scope got bigger when I organized forums and business competitions with more than 1,000 attendees from three universities.

I also pursued business ideas. First, I tried selling custom-printed T-shirts to student organizations. Then I pursued a mobile app social network for posting photos with voiceovers with Max, who is now our co-founder at UnitX. Startups taught us a lot of lessons, especially the 95% of challenges beyond technology that it takes to land an idea.

Sam: Could you share more about UnitX and what you are building? What made you decide to take the leap and start the company?

Keven: UnitX builds AI vision systems for factories. Pretty much every product around you — your phone, your car, the chair you’re sitting on — gets inspected for defects somewhere along the line. Usually, that inspection is done by people or older rule-based cameras that are brittle and expensive.

We replace that with AI-powered “eyes” that are more accurate, faster to deploy, and easier to use. We have more than 2,000 systems running on factory lines around the world today.

Bigger picture, we’re a robotics 2.0 company: AI-enabled hardware that changes the physical world. Manufacturing is one-sixth of global GDP and the first place this kind of hardware can deploy at real scale. We sit at the intersection of two curves: AI getting more capable and hardware getting cheaper.

As for taking the leap, my mom gave me a deep love of how physical things get made, as well as a sense of respect for people working in factories. When I saw AI getting really capable while most factories still ran vision technology from decades ago, the gap was obvious. Manufacturing is how value gets created in this world, and the people doing it deserve better tools.

Sam: What has been a moment where you felt completely out of your depth as a founder, and how did you navigate through it?

Keven: When we were deploying our 100th unit or so, we had a really tough deployment.

Our product inspects manufacturing defects with AI vision on production lines. This particular customer’s requirements were complex and the scope was big. We were having a hard time getting it across the finish line.

At that point, we had to make a decision: either give up or keep going. We decided to keep going by doubling down. We lived onsite for three months. Now that customer is our largest customer, with more than 800 systems purchased. We also helped them grow their market share to number one in the world through better product quality. That experience taught me three things: first, human will is the strongest thing in this universe; second, by breaking problems down into components, one can solve anything; and third, a great team is necessary to achieve great success.

Sam: What do you do for fun or to reset your mind?

Keven: I enjoy spending time with my wife watching videos on politics, history, and sometimes cat videos. I try to exercise every day. The StairMaster is the most efficient indoor exercise I’ve found in terms of sweat per unit of time. I find exercising helps improve the spirit and gives me energy.

Sam: For the up-and-coming founders and executives in the Asian Tech Collective, what is the single biggest lesson you hope they take away from your journey so far?

Keven: Be ambitious. Resources are not the limit. Your imagination is the limit.

When I started my life in America, I had my parents’ support, but I didn’t have many other resources. I had the opportunity and met great people along the way. I learned that when you think big, hold integrity, and work hard, good things eventually happen.

Sam: What is the most Asian thing you do?

Keven: My wife and I love food. I love grabbing dim sum, Little Mongolian Sheep hot pot, and barbecued lamb skewers with my wife. If my wife let me, I’d have those every week.