IoT Hub is a free Seattle community for people working where industrial technology, AI and operational systems meet. It started in January 2016, before "industrial AI" was a common phrase, and its sessions are led by practitioners who have run the systems they describe.
A Physical AI series is in preparation. Join on Meetup to hear first when the dates are set.
Join. Membership is free on Meetup, where every session is announced first.
Watch. Thirty-four recorded sessions are on the IoT Hub YouTube channel.
Speak. If you have run an industrial AI, automation or edge deployment and can say what happened, including what did not work, propose a session to the organizers through Meetup.
Suggest a topic. The community chooses the topics. Tell the organizers what you want the room to take on next.
January 2016, in Seattle. Volunteer co-organizers run it; no single person or company does.
3,800+ on Meetup, from operations, engineering, product, finance and investing.
4.7 out of 5 by members on Meetup, across more than 360 ratings.
More than ninety on Meetup alone, plus sessions listed elsewhere. More than seventy senior executives have spoken.
In-person sessions have drawn 80 to 120 people. Online sessions are recorded, and the recordings on YouTube have been watched more than 5,800 times.
Sixty to ninety minutes: one or two speakers with operational experience, structured questions, and time to talk. Speakers are practitioners, and vendor decks stay out.
Free to attend. Speaking slots go to people who have run what they describe.
The community chooses the topics; sponsors do not. They have included deploying AI in operational environments, building at the edge, moving from hardware to software-defined products, and what smart manufacturing transformation requires compared with what vendors claim.
The room includes operations leaders, plant managers, chief digital officers, vendors, equipment manufacturers, founders, investors and researchers, from manufacturing, energy, logistics, utilities, construction and mining. It skews toward the people making decisions over the people selling to them.
A decade of those conversations showed which commercial assumptions fail, and how often the same ones fail again. The methodology is built on that pattern.
IoT Hub is independent of Thing Company and is not a sales channel. Attending an event creates no commercial relationship.
MENTORING IN THE MANUFACTURING STREAM AT CDL-SEATTLE
2022, when the Manufacturing stream launched at CDL-Seattle, hosted by the University of Washington's Foster School of Business.
CDL-Seattle takes around twenty companies a year across its streams. Some join mid-cohort.
Customer development, go-to-market and fundraising, with a plain account of what the evidence supports.
CDL-Seattle companies have raised more than $330 million in follow-on venture funding since 2022, according to CDL (reported by GeekWire, July 2026).
A personal commitment, separate from Thing Company. CDL companies are not clients by default, and the role carries no preferential terms.
IoT Hub is where the questions come up. When one of them is your own capital decision, a Sprint Assessment tests it with the buyers who would sign.
Or reach us directly at hello@thing.company