Hyphen

Hyphen, originally founded in 2020 as Ono Food Co. by Stephen Klein and Daniel Fukuba, pivoted from a robotic food truck to a restaurant automation platform and rebranded as Hyphen. Its flagship product is the Makeline, an automated assembly system that sits beneath the counter and builds bowls and salads from incoming digital orders while human staff continue making other items on the top line. Klein previously worked at Instacart and robotic coffee shop Cafe X, and Fukuba came from robotic assembly work at SpaceX and Zume Pizza. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Hyphen drew significant restaurant-industry backing: Chipotle's Cultivate Next fund invested a reported total of about $25 million through 2025 to test an 'Augmented Makeline,' and Cava joined later rounds. In August 2025 Hyphen closed a $25 million Series B with participation from CAVA Group; an earlier $24 million Series A was led by Tiger Global.