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Company Information

Our Mission

Foundry Labs designs, deploys, and scales custom AI systems for startups and enterprises. Emerging from Japan's most cross-disciplinary AI community, our Forward Deployed Engineers embed deeply with your team, transferring our capabilities as we deliver.

Core Services

Meet the founders

A founder who connects research and business, a practitioner of enterprise deployment, and an operations leader with deep roots in Japan. Their experience comes together at Foundry Labs.

Ilya Kulyatin

Co-founder & CEO

Ilya Kulyatin

Ilya’s background spans business, finance and machine learning, with quantitative research and machine learning work across Europe, the US and Asia. Having built startups in Singapore and New York, he brings experience in company building to Foundry Labs’ AI strategy and product development.

He also founded Tokyo AI (TAI), bringing entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and industry practitioners together. His community work connects Japan’s AI ecosystem with people and opportunities internationally.

Ilya on LinkedIn
Declan Clowry

Co-founder & CTO

Declan Clowry

Declan spent six years at Palantir Technologies, progressing from hands-on work as a Deployment Strategist to Enterprise Lead. He led teams of Forward Deployed Engineers and Deployment Strategists in the UK, Germany and Japan, delivering systems across healthcare, defence and manufacturing.

Before Palantir, he worked in digital transformation in the NHS. At Foundry Labs, he leads the FDE & DS Excellence Programme, drawing on experience doing the roles, hiring for them and running deployment teams.

Declan on LinkedIn
Cedric Wagrez

Co-founder & COO

Cedric Wagrez

Cedric has spent more than 20 years in Japan’s technology sector, with experience across Stability AI, TaskUs and Gengo. His work covers AI services, data strategy and team operations, including leading data strategy and operations at Stability AI.

He brings experience leading cross-functional teams and operating within international AI businesses. That background combines an understanding of technology delivery with the organisational work needed to support it in Japan.

Cedric on LinkedIn