Laminar (Formerly H2Ok Innovations)

Today, Laminar is excited to announce Sanjay Rajan as Chief Revenue Officer. Since joining Laminar as Head of Go-to-Market in 2025, Sanjay has helped expand Laminar’s global footprint and accelerate adoption of Laminar’s Chemical-Process AI platform across Food & Beverage, Health & Beauty, CPG, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, and Adhesives manufacturing. Annie L., Laminar CEO & Co-Founder: “The need for truly autonomous factories has never been greater as process manufacturers around the globe face increasing margin compression due to macroeconomic factors like rising input costs, loss of expertise, and geopolitical risk. Since joining Laminar in 2025, Sanjay has accelerated Laminar’s global footprint as we enable more customers to address their production capacity constraints and improve margins. By expanding Sanjay's leadership to our entire revenue function, Laminar will be stronger and ready to meet this incredible market demand.” Sanjay Rajan, Laminar CRO: “All of today’s Industrial AI focus is on Physical AI in discrete manufacturing — robots navigating space and automating human motion. But process manufacturing has a different challenge: continued reliance on human expert intervention to continuously interpret process conditions and manually correct operations in real time. Laminar’s Chemical-Process AI changes that by first sensing real-time fluid conditions, reasoning the optimal action, and then acting to ensure every cycle runs on the best conditions. I’m thrilled to step into this role as Laminar continues its mission to transform the industry with our first-of-its-kind AI platform that powers fully autonomous process manufacturing.” Read the full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/eV-EdWtU

Timers don’t know what’s happening inside your pipe. Chemistry does. Most Clean-In-Place systems still run on fixed recipes built around worst-case assumptions — extra rinse time, extra chemical exposure, extra water usage — all added “just to be safe.” The problem is that safety margins quietly become wasted production time, utilities, and product capacity. Laminar changes that. Our process aware machine learning models monitor what’s actually moving through the line in real time. Instead of relying on static timers or conductivity thresholds alone, Laminar detects the live chemical fingerprint inside the pipe to determine exactly when a line is clean and ready for the next step. That means no more overwashing when the line is already clean. No more guessing whether residue is still present. Just real-time visibility into the process as it happens. We’ve helped manufacturers reclaim 20–30 minutes per CIP cycle and turn that time directly back into production. Across multiple cycles per day, those savings compound fast — alongside reductions in water, chemicals, energy, and unnecessary product loss. Learn more about how Laminar cuts down CIP and product changeover time in food and beverage facilities: https://lnkd.in/eSJZBsVb

"We worked with a rum producer carrying over 20 distinct flavor profiles. Their cleaning process between runs had stopped working – flavor carryover was causing quality deviations, and introducing new SKUs was making the problem worse. They went to their chemical supplier for advice. It didn’t solve it. Production efficiency was taking a hit, and the craft they’d built their reputation on was at risk.” In a recent interview for Valiant CEO Magazine, Laminar CEO & Co-Founder Annie L. described one of the operational challenges many food & beverage manufacturers face right now. "Laminar gave them inline, real-time visibility into the chemistry of what was actually inside the pipe — dynamic CIP that responds to what’s happening, not what a static timer assumes. They kept their artisanal process entirely intact, now guaranteed quality and safety on every single shift and changeover, without compromising the craft." Catch the full story and learn more about how Laminar uses process-aware AI to redefine what it means for a F&B factory to operate at optimal efficiency and sustainability in today's landscape. Read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/e3pVB2ek

Less than two weeks left until the TECH WEEK by a16z Innovation Showcase for #BOSTechWeek. Laminar, studio 3e8, Transaera, Inc., and J.P. Morgan are co-hosting the Innovation Showcase at Greentown Labs! We are opening the doors to Boston-area innovators for an afternoon of live demos, hands-on hardware, and showcasing the kind of tech that needs to exist to solve our world's biggest challenges. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eFZ-i5Um? Greentown Labs Tuesday, May 26 12 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Team Laminar was at the first-ever Boston Climate Week 2026 this year, where conversations around climate-tech covered everything from renewable energy and EV infrastructure to hydrogen and grid modernization. One thing that stood out to us: Our mission to build climate tech that reduces waste in food & beverage manufacturing is more important than ever. Inspired by conversations during Climate Week, Laminar Business Development Representative Christa Campbell explores why operational efficiency in F&B manufacturing plants is a crucial part of climate-tech discussions in our latest blog post. The reality is that manufacturers still waste significant amounts of water, chemicals, energy, and production time through outdated, timer-based operations — especially during clean-in-place and changeover cycles. Our latest blog dives into: ‣ How manufacturing innovation can leverage climate innovation to reduce waste ‣ How operators can align the goals greater sustainability and operational productivity ‣ Why Process Aware AI is the next wave of factory innovation Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/e59C9WDd

The US beer industry has a water problem that doesn’t get talked about enough. Colorado, Texas, and California are some of the largest beer-producing states in the country — and all sit in medium-to-high water stress regions. The average brewery uses roughly 7 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of beer, with a major portion tied to Clean-In-Place (CIP) systems between production runs. The issue is that many CIP cycles still run on fixed timers, leading to unnecessary water, energy, and chemical use. Laminar helps breweries monitor what’s moving through the line in real time using inline sensors that detect whether the pipe contains product, cleaning chemicals, or rinse water. Instead of running CIP based on conservative timer settings, breweries can stop cleaning cycles the moment the line is actually clean. That means less overwashing, lower utility usage, less product loss, and more production time — without replacing existing equipment or rebuilding processes. Learn more about how Laminar is helping reduce water usage for breweries https://lnkd.in/eSJZBsVb

The sauce industry is quietly hitting a breaking point. Consumer demand for variety has exploded — a major sauce manufacturing customer of Laminar went from 300 SKUs to 3,000 in just 5 years. Low-fat, high-fat, new flavors, new sizes — the variety never stops. But factory operations haven't kept up. Here's what's happening: More SKUs = more changeovers = more CIP cycles. Factories are spending 3-5 hours cleaning between runs, and it's become the primary constraint on production capacity. Water and chemical costs are squeezing margins. Co-manufacturers are running on razor-thin schedules — one missed ingredient on an 8-hour run throws the entire day off. Deep manufacturing expertise is disappearing. The veterans who could smell burnt sugar from across a facility are retiring, taking irreplaceable knowledge with them. The sauce factories pulling ahead are rethinking Clean-In-Place — moving from fixed timer-based CIP to self-driving CIP and changeovers that adapts in real time. Learn more about the challenges facing the sauce industry and how manufacturers are tackling them in a conversation between Sanjay Rajan and Cassie Orkin 👇 https://lnkd.in/gva-x-gH

Last week, we hosted manufacturing leaders from Sistema Fiep — one of Brazil's largest industrial federations representing 47,000+ industries across Paraná, Brazil — at our headquarters in Greentown Labs. The delegation visited Laminar to learn about how Laminar is pioneering Physical AI in the manufacturing industry. The delegation represented manufacturers across food & beverage, cosmetics, construction, and forestry. The pressures they face — rising costs, resource constraints, aging infrastructure, and a shrinking pool of experienced operators — mirror what manufacturers worldwide contend with every day. Laminar Co-Founder and CEO Annie L. kicked off the day with a CEO's perspective on what's actually driving the urgency around AI in manufacturing right now — rising input costs, SKU proliferation, sustainability pressure, and the accelerating loss of operator knowledge. Annie emphasized how AI is no longer a digital transformation initiative. It's operational infrastructure — and the manufacturers treating it that way are pulling ahead. For Brazil's industrial base, that shift is already underway. Laminar Co-Founder and CTO David Lu broke down the technical architecture behind a self-driving factory — the three layers that have to work together for physical AI to close the loop on a live production line. For manufacturers evaluating where to start, understanding this architecture is the difference between a pilot that delivers and one that stalls. CRO Sanjay Rajan got into the practical realities of evaluating and adopting physical AI — what questions manufacturers should ask vendors, why explainability is non-negotiable, and why being a fast follower beats being first every time. For a delegation considering their first serious AI deployments, this was the framework they needed. Members of our sales, customer, and hardware teams also shared: → Why operator trust is the hardest part of AI adoption on the factory floor → What it takes to scale AI across facilities, regions, and languages → How physical AI preserves institutional knowledge before it walks out the door with a retiring operator → How our sensors power our process-aware ML models on the factory floor Grateful to the full Laminar team who led the conversations throughout the day — Annie L., David Lu, Sanjay Rajan, Cassie Orkin, Karel van Leeuwe, Bobby McLaughlin, Mahde Alchab, Ernesto Junior, Brody Lustberg, Joseph Arjona-Sanchez And to the Sistema FIEP delegation — thank you for making the trip. Looking forward to continuing the conversation in Brazil! Read more about the event here → https://lnkd.in/eRHFkxfw

"When new flavors enter the flavor wheel, manufacturers default to full clean-in-place cycles — building the confidence to replace those full CIPs with shorter rinse cycles takes a very long time." That's the reality for flavor and fragrance manufacturers today. Every new SKU means a new flavor production sequence. Manufacturers start conservative, run full CIPs, and wait months before they’ve seen enough repetitions to optimize the flavor wheel for shorter rinses. In Episode 6 of On the Line with Laminar, Sanjay Rajan and Jonathan Mindnich break down why flavor wheel complexity is making production sequencing harder — and how real-time process data and control helps quality teams build confidence in new sequences faster. → Why new flavor and fragrance product introductions break the flavor wheel → Why infrequent SKUs make historical optimization nearly impossible → How real-time spectral data and self-driving clean-in-place and changeovers enables quality teams validate "clean", before it reaches the bottle. Watch the full episode → https://lnkd.in/eaQnaCeT

We're excited to be hosting TECH WEEK by a16z Innovation Showcase on May 26 during #BOSTechWeek! Laminar team and other top-notch technical teams solving the world's biggest problems will give live demos, hands-on hardware showcases, and more. Wander the floor, meet the founders, touch the products — and see everything Boston's high-tech startups have to offer! Greentown Labs Tuesday, May 26 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eFZ-i5Um?