Not many 16-year-olds can say they founded a company dedicated to change how energy is distributed through space-based power infrastructure.  

Neither can Kai Sugihara—he founded Zero Industries, an engineering company that is working on space-based power infrastructure with a mission to make energy more widely available, when he was just 15.  

Zero, founded in 2025 by Sugihara, Koya Tani, chief operating officer and Yusei Fujii, chief technology officer, is developing a product that aims to engineer energy as an integrated system. The San Francisco-based company recently completed a U.S. $3 million pre-seed funding round. 

Zero is launching its product as some companies in the automation space are moving to manage energy systems differently through collaborations and joint projects.  

For example, Siemens and FuelCell Energy recently announced a collaboration that aims to accelerate the growth of fuel cell-based power generation through aligning electrical design and supply with fuel cell technologies to support deployment of distributed energy systems.    

Additionally, KBC, a Yokogawa company, announced an advanced process simulation and digital twin platform for engineers and safety specialists in the refining, petrochemical, chemical, and process industries. By combining engineering physics with machine learning, it can help engineers make informed decisions while maintaining digital twins and operations across traditional and emerging energy systems.   

Now 16 years old, Sugihara told Automation World how he founded Zero, and how the company is focusing on automation and physical infrastructure to shift how energy is used. 

Automation World: Can you describe what Zero does and how you founded the company? What are your primary responsibilities as CEO? 

Kai Sugihara: Zero is an engineering company dedicated to building the physical foundations of the future. 

Superintelligence is advancing at an extraordinary pace, but the physical world is not keeping up. Intelligence alone cannot generate electricity, manufacture products, or build infrastructure. We believe the next great technological revolution will come from closing that gap. 

Our mission is to make the physical world more programmable, abundant, and accessible to humanity.  

I founded Zero at 15, but my journey began much earlier. I started designing aircraft and spacecraft when I was four, built my first water-cooled computer at nine, and launched my first business at twelve. After founding several technology ventures, I realized that I wanted to pursue something much bigger: building the infrastructure that will support human civilization for generations. 

As CEO, my responsibility is to define our long-term vision, identify the most important problems worth solving, bring together exceptional people, and allocate resources to turn ambitious ideas into engineering reality. 

AW: You recently closed a $3 million pre-seed round. How is this significant for Zero? What missions and initiatives does the company intend to use the funding for? 

KS: Raising $3 million at the pre-seed stage is an important milestone for Zero, but I don’t consider fundraising an achievement in itself. Capital is simply a tool; what matters is what we accomplish with it. 

The industries that sustain civilization—energy, manufacturing, construction, and infrastructure—represent enormous opportunities for technological innovation. Yet many of these industries still operate on systems and assumptions developed decades ago. 

We intend to use this funding to assemble an exceptional engineering team, advance our core technologies, develop prototypes, and establish strategic partnerships with industrial players. 

We are particularly focused on the intersection of superintelligence, automation, and physical infrastructure. We believe these technologies will fundamentally transform how humanity builds, produces, and operates the physical world. 

Ultimately, this funding gives us the resources to take the first meaningful steps toward a much larger mission: building the physical foundations for humanity’s future. 

AW: Zero is working on space-based power infrastructure with a mission to make energy more widely available. Describe what this looks like in practice, and why you think it’s important for the future of energy. 

KS: Energy is the foundation of civilization. Nearly everything humanity wants to achieve—advanced manufacturing, superintelligence, space exploration, and economic development—ultimately depends on access to abundant and reliable energy. 

Our vision for space-based power infrastructure is to fundamentally rethink how energy is generated and distributed. By collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it wirelessly to receiving infrastructure, we can explore ways to overcome some of the geographical limitations of conventional power systems. 

Imagine a future where access to energy is no longer determined primarily by proximity to power plants, transmission lines, or natural resources. Energy could become significantly more flexible and accessible, opening new opportunities for industrial development. 

I believe the next revolution will be about making energy not only cleaner and more abundant, but also radically more accessible and decentralized. 

AW: Your main product is HELIOS, which treats energy as a system in which generation, transmission, storage and settlement are designed together. How is this applied in real-world settings? How is this different from existing energy systems, and why is Zero moving forward with this type of energy design? 

KS: The fundamental philosophy behind HELIOS is simple: energy should be engineered as an integrated system, rather than a collection of independent technologies. 

HELIOS brings together four interconnected elements: Helios Beam for wireless power transmission, Helios Cell for energy storage, Helios Grid for intelligent network coordination, and Power Credit for energy accounting and settlement. 

Consider an industrial facility that can receive energy from multiple sources, store it according to demand, dynamically distribute it across its operations, and automatically manage the associated economic transactions. 

Rather than optimizing each function independently, the entire system can be coordinated to improve flexibility, efficiency, and resource utilization. 

This philosophy extends far beyond energy. At Zero, we believe that some of the greatest technological breakthroughs will not come from improving existing infrastructure, but from fundamentally redesigning how infrastructure is built and operated. 

AW: You’re notably young for a CEO. How is this an advantage in the automation, energy and digitalization spaces? What are your hopes for the future of energy and Zero? 

KS: I think my greatest advantage is that I haven’t spent decades being told what is impossible. 

Many industries are shaped by assumptions that have existed for generations. When you grow up surrounded by exponential advances in computing, superintelligence, and engineering, you naturally begin to question why the physical world still operates under so many limitations. 

Of course, being young doesn’t automatically make someone a better entrepreneur. Experience matters enormously. That’s why I believe in surrounding myself with people who are far more knowledgeable than I am in their respective fields. 

My ambition for Zero goes far beyond building a successful startup. Our vision extends beyond any single technology, product, or industry. 

We want to make the fundamental capabilities of civilization—energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, and eventually the ability to expand beyond Earth—radically more abundant and accessible. 

Superintelligence is giving humanity an unprecedented ability to imagine the future. Our mission is to give humanity the physical power to build it.