Sohrab Haghighat

Sohrab Haghighat is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hestus, Inc., an advanced technology development startup that participated in the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch. Previously, he spent six years as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceRyde, a space transportation company from the Y Combinator Winter 2019 cohort, which ultimately culminated in an intellectual property sale in 2025. Before pursuing these entrepreneurial ventures, Haghighat served as an early employee at Cruise, where he directed the planning and controls engineering teams for their autonomous vehicle programs. He holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering and has contributed extensively to the field's academic and commercial advancement, authoring 23 technical papers and securing 13 distinct patents. His career currently focuses on bridging rigorous academic research with scalable commercial innovation across the aerospace, autonomous systems, and space technology sectors.