Milan Shen
| Milan Shen | |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, data scientist |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founder of Centauri AI |
Milan Shen is an American entrepreneur and data scientist who is a co-founder of Centauri AI, a modern ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and data science platform designed for the finance industry. The company was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch.[1]
Career
Before founding Centauri AI, Shen held several roles in data science at major technology companies. In 2014, he worked as a data scientist at Twitter. From 2015 to 2019, he was employed at Airbnb, initially as a data scientist and later as a data science manager. He subsequently joined Meta, where he served as a research scientist manager from 2019 to 2022 and then as a senior manager and research scientist from 2022 to 2023.
In 2023, Shen co-founded Centauri AI alongside He Lu and James Wu. The company develops an AI-powered data platform tailored to banks, investment firms, and other financial institutions, with an initial focus on structured finance. The platform addresses inefficiencies in how financial professionals handle complex asset data, which is frequently exchanged in Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint files. Analysts in these sectors traditionally spend significant time manually extracting, cleaning, and analyzing data from such files—a process commonly referred to as data wrangling.[2]
Centauri AI's product uses artificial intelligence to automate the extraction and transformation of data from unstructured documents, reducing processing time from hours to minutes. The platform also enables users to query historical data through natural language, maintain audit trails, and produce visual analytics. According to the company, its target market includes over 100,000 investment teams involved in complex data analysis for alternative investments, including private credit, private equity, and real estate sectors.
Following its launch, the company began a pilot program with a brokerage team at a public investment bank. The company has identified a potential addressable market of approximately $5 billion.[3]
Shen is based in Stanford, California.
References
- ↑ "Centauri AI – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ "Centauri AI". 'Centauri AI}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ "Centauri AI – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.