Cong Yu
About Cong Yu
Cong Yu is Head of Engineering at Dandy in New York. Since April 2025 he has led development of its digital dental lab products. These products use AI/ML-powered computer-aided design, manufacturing and automation, and Dandy also sells software to dental practices. His remit also covers computer vision and 3D/CAD systems.
Before Dandy he was VP of Engineering and Head of AI at Celonis, from July 2022 to April 2025. In that role he built and led the AI organization and scaled generative AI systems for process intelligence. From September 2010 to July 2022 he was a Principal Scientist and Director of Research at Google, in Google Research and DeepMind.
He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan (2001 to 2007), an M.S. in Biology from Michigan and a B.S. in Biology (Genetics) from Fudan University. His published research covers NLP, database systems and information retrieval. It includes Charformer, a character-level transformer model, and TURL, a framework for learning representations of relational tables. He also developed Timber, a native XML database.
Crunchbase lists one personal investment for Cong Yu: a seed round in Faira. It shows no lead investments, no exits and no companies founded. The investment date and round size are not visible in the public page, so they are not stated here. Crunchbase's activity feed shows a Faira funding round dated June 13, 2018, but the page does not confirm that this is the round Cong Yu joined. He has not published a fund, syndicate or angel group affiliation that we could find.
Cong Yu has not publicly stated a check size, preferred stage, sector thesis or geography. With one recorded investment, the public record is too thin to infer a pattern. Founders whose products involve applied machine learning, language models, structured or tabular data, or enterprise AI are closest to his professional experience. That is an observation about his background, not a stated investing focus.
- Faira: seed round listed on Crunchbase as a personal investment by Cong Yu. Investment date not public.
Investing activity
Cong Yu has made 1 investment according to Crunchbase across 1 portfolio company.
Deals
Frequently asked questions about Cong Yu
Is Cong Yu an angel investor?
Crunchbase lists Cong Yu as an individual investor with one personal investment, a seed round in Faira. He works full time as Head of Engineering at Dandy.
What does Cong Yu do?
He is Head of Engineering at Dandy, where he has led digital dental lab and AI/ML product development since April 2025. He was previously VP of Engineering and Head of AI at Celonis and a Principal Scientist at Google Research / DeepMind.
What is Cong Yu's check size?
No check size is public. He has not published investment criteria.
What stage does Cong Yu invest in?
The only recorded investment is a seed round, in Faira. He has not described a broader stage preference.
Where is Cong Yu based?
Crunchbase lists his location as New York, New York, United States.
Does Cong Yu have AI expertise relevant to founders?
Yes. He ran the AI organization at Celonis and spent about 12 years in Google Research and DeepMind. He has published on NLP, table understanding and databases.
How can founders reach Cong Yu?
Founders on Lounge can see Cong Yu's contact details in AI Investor Contacts (paid plans), check for a warm introduction through members who worked with them under Warm Paths, and add Cong Yu to their Investor Pipeline to track the conversation.