# VLABS34

> VLABS34 is an Istanbul-based venture studio that co-founds industrial AI, robotics and deep tech companies with industry partners, from idea to scale.

VLABS34 (also written VLABS 34, Venture Labs 34, V-Labs, V Labs Istanbul) is a venture studio based in Istanbul, Türkiye. It is not a VC fund: it co-founds and builds companies in sectors it already knows, with industry partners, sharing one technology core (computer vision, robotics, sensor fusion, document AI, AI agents, compliance AI and private AI) across every venture.

Website: https://www.vlabs34.com · Contact: izzet.b@v-labs.ai · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/v-labs-tech/ · V-Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VentureTurkiye

## Portfolio

### RoboShipTech: Autonomous Maritime Fab

An engineering, automation and manufacturing company that pairs half a century of traditional pipe-fabrication experience with AI-driven robotics, solving shipyards' high costs, human error and lost time.

- Sector: Maritime
- Breakthrough: Autonomous fabrication for shipyards using AI & Computer Vision.
- Traction: $3.4M sales order secured before launch.
- Stage: Scale
- With VLABS34 since: December 2025
- Leadership: Özgür Bektaş (Shipbuilding Expert), Aliihsan Koca (Technical Manager)
- References: Tersan Shipyard, Sanmar
- Website: https://www.roboshiptech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/roboshiptech/

### AytuTech: Sensor Fusion Perception

An R&D and engineering company developing industrial AI, multi-sensor fusion and swarm intelligence for precision agriculture, defence and autonomous systems.

- Sector: Defence & R&D
- Breakthrough: A tri-sensor fusion SDK (LiDAR, 4D radar, camera) that keeps perception working in fog, dust, rain and snow, built on in-house AI, computer vision, decision support, swarm, mechatronics, embedded and IoT engineering.
- Traction: Venture capital investment in September 2025, İTÜ Teknopark admission in December 2025, TÜBİTAK 1507 and 1707 project grants in February 2026.
- Field monitored at Alovafarm: 260,000 m²
- Plants tracked: 125,000
- Earlier disease detection: 72 h
- With VLABS34 since: September 2025
- Leadership: Prof. Dr. Aliihsan Koca (CEO / Founder), Dr. Nureddin Bennett (CTO)
- Research partners: İTÜ Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, İTÜ Informatics Institute, Konya Technical University, MIR Research and Development, Alovafarm
- Website: https://aytutech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aytu-ara%C5%9Ft%C4%B1rma-ve-geli%C5%9Ftirme-a-%C5%9F/

### Aiten: AI Workforce for Logistics

An AI workforce for road freight: digital agents take over the daily follow-up between operations teams and drivers, from shipment status to signed paperwork.

- Sector: Logistics
- Breakthrough: AI agents that follow up with drivers over WhatsApp and voice calls, verify signed waybills and update TMS/ERP systems. No app for drivers to install.
- Traction: 4,800+ driver conversations and 1,200+ shipments tracked.
- Driver conversations: 4,803
- Shipments tracked: 1,207
- Documents processed: 2,481
- Leadership: Deniz Cihan Tiryaki (Co-Founder & CEO), Abdullah Can Göktaş (Co-Founder & CTO), İlker Taştan (Co-Founder & CPO), İnan Tiryaki (Co-Founder & CMO), Semih Okyay (Co-Founder & CFO)
- Website: https://aiten.io/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aiten.io/

### TradeComplize: AI Trade Compliance

An AI-powered RegTech platform that checks letter of credit (LC) documents against LC terms and ICC rules (UCP 600, ISBP 821, ICC Opinions), flags discrepancies with rule references, and leaves the final call to the bank's checker. LC document examination at banks is still largely manual; expertise is concentrated in a small group of specialists with a 2–3 year learning curve, so trade finance teams can't scale with volume and missed discrepancies create financial and compliance risk.

- Sector: Finance & Trade
- Breakthrough: AI that finds discrepancies, not just reads documents: cross-document reasoning (invoice ↔ LC, B/L ↔ insurance) with every flag tied to the relevant UCP 600 / ISBP clause, deployed on-premise inside the bank.
- Traction: Pilots with 2 Turkish banks; 8 product modules; average review time under 5 minutes per LC file.
- Fewer errors: 95%
- L/C capacity, same team: 10x
- Review time per LC file: <5 min
- Product modules: 8
- Stage: Pilot
- With VLABS34 since: 2025
- With VLABS34: The first venture spun out of VLABS34.
- Leadership: Merve Boğazlıyanlıoğlu (Co-Founder & CEO), Dr. Ömer Güneş (Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer), Sevilay Aydın (Trade Finance Director)
- Website: https://www.tradecomplize.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trade-complize/

### VerifiGo: Trust Infrastructure

An identity and document verification API that checks IDs and company documents against official MERSIS, population-registry and tax-office (GİB) records.

- Sector: Finance & Trade
- Breakthrough: 99.9% Neural extraction engine & Gov-Sync (MERSIS/NVI) for instant verification.
- Traction: Bank-Grade Security Certified.
- Identity verification: <2.5 s
- ID formats read: 150+
- Documents per hour: 10k
- Website: https://verifigo.ai/

### Docsfra: Document AI Infrastructure

Document AI infrastructure that gives enterprises one reliable layer between their documents and their AI systems.

- Sector: Enterprise
- Breakthrough: Turns PDFs, scans, emails and audio into structured, evidence-backed data for AI systems. Available as an API or self-hosted and air-gapped.
- Traction: Live API for banks, insurers and legal teams.
- Leadership: Selçuk Göksel Gedik (Co-Founder), Cabir Sonay Meral (Co-Founder)
- Website: https://docsfra.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/docsfra/

### SeriAI: Enterprise AI Operating System

An enterprise AI platform that brings AI models, agents and APIs together on one secure infrastructure, so companies can run their own independent "OwnGPT" without shadow AI, vendor lock-in or scattered licence costs.

- Sector: Enterprise
- Breakthrough: Not a model provider or chat tool but the control layer for enterprise AI: different models in one interface with no vendor lock-in (bring your own model), departments build and share their own expert assistants, and permissions, quotas and budgets are managed centrally. Runs on-premise or in a private cloud.
- Traction: 5 enterprise references. At LC Waikiki, "LCWGPT" is used across the company by 3,000+ weekly active users.
- Weekly active users at LC Waikiki: 3,000+
- Delivery cycle: 6 mo → 6 wk
- Lower total AI cost: 80%
- Shadow AI eliminated: 100%
- Stage: Scale
- With VLABS34 since: September 2026
- With VLABS34: Works with the VLABS34 network on enterprise sales, marketing and integration with the other portfolio companies, and can provide their enterprise AI infrastructure.
- Leadership: Hasan Basri Şenkul (Founder & CEO), Batuhan Erkuş (Co-Founder)
- Customers: Yıldız Holding, Loras Holding, LC Waikiki
- Website: https://www.seriai.co/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seriai/

### infliq: Ada, a CMO that finds your customers

Infliq gives businesses a CMO called Ada: she researches the market, builds the strategy, finds the right customers and reaches them by email, phone and ads, so companies can grow without first building a marketing team.

- Sector: Enterprise + Consumer
- Breakthrough: Ada runs the whole marketing job end to end, from market research to customer: she picks the channel, checks the results, corrects herself and keeps going until customers arrive. Google Ads and ad-budget management are next.
- Traction: Launched in September 2026: 6 pilot customers, 30,000+ personalised emails sent, first lead in about 5 minutes.
- Pilot customers: 6
- Personalised emails sent: 30,000+
- To the first lead: ~5 min
- Stage: Pilot
- Leadership: Onur Varol (Co-Founder & CEO)
- Customers: DST Power Generator, SeroState
- Website: https://infliq.io/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infliq/

### Impact4U: Talent & Corporate Innovation

A corporate innovation partner that finishes companies' stalled innovation, R&D, digitalisation and talent projects with hand-picked university talent and the company's own team: 12 modular programmes for 8 departments, starting with a free two-week discovery and delivered against clear KPIs.

- Sector: Talent & Innovation
- Breakthrough: Connects university students with companies through bootcamps and corporate innovation projects, and helps student founders build their teams.
- Traction: 15,000+ students and young professionals across 153 universities.
- Provinces: 81
- Universities: 153
- Students & young professionals: 15,000+
- Events & workshops: 1,000+
- Partner institutions: 100+
- Stage: Revenue
- With VLABS34: Runs the corporate programme and process digitalisation arm of VLABS34; its AI software, engineering and innovation infrastructure is built by VLABS34 engineers.
- Leadership: Mehmet Erka Akbulut (Co-Founder & CEO), Deniz Baran Bek (Co-Founder)
- Customers: Halkbank, BİGE · Bilim Kızlarla Gelecek
- Website: https://www.impact4u.co/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impact4u.co/

## Board

- [İzzet Boğazlıyanlıoğlu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/izzetb/), Co-Founder & CEO: Venture builder with 20+ years building technology companies across Türkiye, MENA and the US: eight startups, four exits. Now leads VLABS34, growing the studio and its ventures to scale.
- [Lokman Ökten](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lokmanokten/), Board Member: Former head of corporate innovation and projects at a global flag-carrier airline, where he led its award-winning intrapreneurship programme. Now builds VLABS34 full-time, scaling its innovation engine and ventures.
- [Murat Öztürk](https://www.linkedin.com/in/murat-%C3%B6zt%C3%BCrk-cia-cpa-smmm-8989277/), Board Member: CFO of a venture capital portfolio management company, Certified Internal Auditor and CPA (SMMM), METU graduate. Brings his finance, audit and investment expertise to VLABS34, structuring its ventures for growth and funding.
- [Dr. Ömer Farukhan Güneş](https://www.linkedin.com/in/farukhan/), Board Member: Junior Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Oxford, with a DPhil in NLP and information extraction. Brings this AI research depth to VLABS34 and its ventures.
- [Prof. Dr. Aliihsan Koca](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliihsan-koca-032b7132/), Board Member: Professor of Mechanical Engineering at İTÜ, founder of AYTU and co-founder of its Luxembourg company, working across defence and agriculture. 17 years in R&D: 40+ funded projects and 60+ publications.
- [Samet İnanır](https://www.linkedin.com/in/samet-inanir-23ab5523/), Board Member: Founder of NaysWorks. On the founding teams of a leading Turkish internet portal, where he led video, and of a fintech app; also a film producer and former DEİK advisor. Guides VLABS34 ventures on macro strategy, capital efficiency and growth.

## Team

- [Deniz Cihan Tiryaki](https://www.linkedin.com/in/deniz-cihan-tiryaki-855315112/), CTO: Venture CTO of VLABS34, leading product strategy, technical architecture and venture incubation across the portfolio. Co-founder and CEO of Aiten and co-founder of Docsfra.
- [Selçuk Göksel Gedik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sel%C3%A7uk-g%C3%B6ksel-gedik-40358952/), Head of Technology: Head of Technology at TradeComplize and founder of a software company. 15 years in telecom IT, from billing-system administration and revenue-assurance quality to expert billing and collection development.
- [Cabir Sonay Meral](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cabir-sonay-meral-110131153/), Head of Product: Head of Product at TradeComplize and managing partner of a software company. Full-stack Java, Spring Boot and React developer who has built billing, online-service and banking software for telecom operators and a bank.
- [Can Göktaş](https://www.linkedin.com/in/acangoktas/), Technical Lead: Venture tech lead at VLABS34 and co-founder & CTO of Aiten. Full-stack product engineer who also co-founded a social event discovery platform, owning its mobile, serverless and real-time stack.
- [Burcu Bayer](https://www.linkedin.com/in/burcu-bayer/), Development Coordinator: Development Coordinator at VLABS34 and customer and operations coordinator at TradeComplize, bringing nine years of research experience as a university research assistant.
- [İnan Tiryaki](https://www.linkedin.com/in/inan-tiryaki/), Product Engineer: Product engineer at VLABS34, building products with AI. Previously a business analyst in e-commerce, turning operations, logistics and field-team needs into Agile delivery.
- [Mehmet Erka Akbulut](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehmeterkaakbulut/), Innovation Lead: Innovation lead at VLABS34, evaluating new venture ideas for the portfolio and building partnerships with industrial companies. Co-founder of Impact4U, leading business development and project scoping.
- [Dilara Kılıç](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilara-k%C4%B1l%C4%B1%C3%A7/), Brand & Creative Operations Lead: Leads brand and creative operations across VLABS34, TradeComplize and Impact4U. Graphic designer with a background in digital media agencies and sustainability-focused entrepreneurship programmes.
- [Onur Varol](https://www.linkedin.com/in/onur-varol-89b315272/), AI Engineer: AI engineer at VLABS34 and co-founder of infliq. Builds AI systems end to end, from on-prem GPU clusters and cloud infrastructure to LLM and agent pipelines and LLMOps.
- [Kadir Sevil](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kadir-s-1b3a1824b/), Business Development: Venture builder at VLABS34, turning ideas into scalable ventures through new business development, business analysis and technology transfer.
- [Furkan Yardım](https://www.linkedin.com/in/furkanyard%C4%B1m/), Operations Support: Operations and procurement specialist at VLABS34. Previously founded and ran his own natural-products e-commerce business end to end, from suppliers and pricing to logistics.

## Venture co-founders

- [Özgür Bektaş](https://www.linkedin.com/in/%C3%B6zg%C3%BCr-bektas-a2b507415/), Co-Founder & General Manager: General Manager of RoboShipTech. Brings the shipyard know-how of 200+ new builds to its AI-driven robotic pipe fabrication. (co-founder of RoboShipTech)
- [Prof. Dr. Aliihsan Koca](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliihsan-koca-032b7132/), Founder & CEO: Founder and CEO of AYTU and faculty member at İTÜ Mechanical Engineering. 17 years in R&D: 40+ projects funded by national and international programmes, about $7M of R&D budget led, 60+ publications and 5 patent applications. (co-founder of AytuTech)
- [Dr. Nureddin Bennett](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ing-nureddin-bennett/), CTO: CTO of AYTU. Engineering doctorate from RWTH Aachen on autonomous construction machinery, developed with a global equipment maker; leads AYTU's mechatronics, embedded systems and machine-vision work. (co-founder of AytuTech)
- [Semih Okyay](https://www.linkedin.com/in/semih-okyay-44925830/), Co-Founder & CFO: Co-founder and CFO of Aiten. Founder of his own data analytics firm and former enterprise performance management consultant, bringing data intelligence and decision support to Aiten. (co-founder of Aiten)
- [İlker Taştan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilker-tastan/), Co-Founder & CPO: Co-founder and CPO of Aiten. Product-minded frontend engineer (React, Next.js, TypeScript) who took his own workforce-management SaaS from idea to the App Store and Google Play, now used by businesses. (co-founder of Aiten)
- [Merve Boğazlıyanlıoğlu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/merve-bogazliyan/), Co-Founder & CEO: CEO and co-founder of TradeComplize. 20+ years in trade finance at participation banks, the last 11 leading letter-of-credit and guarantee operations as a senior foreign trade manager. (co-founder of TradeComplize)
- [Sevilay Aydın](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sevilay-aydin-mba-cdcs/), Trade Finance Director: Trade Finance Director at TradeComplize. MBA with CDCS and GAFTA certifications, bringing hands-on documentary credit and trade operations expertise to the platform's examination rules. (co-founder of TradeComplize)
- [Cabir Sonay Meral](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cabir-sonay-meral-110131153/), Co-Founder: Co-founder of Docsfra and managing partner of a software company. Full-stack engineer (Java, Spring Boot, React) who also leads product at TradeComplize. (co-founder of Docsfra)
- [Selçuk Göksel Gedik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sel%C3%A7uk-g%C3%B6ksel-gedik-40358952/), Co-Founder: Co-founder of Docsfra and founder of a software company. Former expert developer on billing systems for a leading telecom operator and a pay-TV broadcaster; also heads technology at TradeComplize. (co-founder of Docsfra)
- [Hasan Basri Şenkul](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hasanbsenkul/), Founder & CEO: Founder and CEO of SeriAI. Former software engineer in retail and software companies; took SeriAI from a university incubation programme to a technopark R&D base. (co-founder of SeriAI)
- [Batuhan Erkuş](https://www.linkedin.com/in/batuhanerkus/), Co-Founder: Co-founder of SeriAI. MBA and project manager who has delivered IT, fintech and SaaS products for 20+ brands with Agile teams. (co-founder of SeriAI)
- [Dt. Deniz Baran Bek](https://www.linkedin.com/in/deniz-baran-bek/), Co-Founder: Co-founder of Impact4U, leading its Communitive campus network, community operations, young-talent selection and events. Dentist and entrepreneur with 8+ years of building communities. (co-founder of Impact4U)

## Network

### University Collaboration

- [ITU Ari Teknokent](https://www.ariteknokent.com.tr/): İTÜ's technology park in Istanbul
- [TUBITAK](https://tubitak.gov.tr/): Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye
- [Oxford University](https://www.ox.ac.uk/)
- [Gebze Tech U](https://www.gtu.edu.tr/): Gebze Technical University
- [1773 İTÜ Teknopark](https://1773ituteknopark.com/): İTÜ's technology development zone
- [Medeniyet Teknopark](https://medeniyetteknopark.com/): İstanbul Medeniyet University's technology development zone
- [Luxinnovation](https://luxinnovation.lu/): Luxembourg's national innovation agency

### Funding Collaboration

- [Letven Capital](https://letvencapital.com/): Venture capital portfolio management
- [Ecofolio](https://ecofolio.com.tr/): Equity Crowdfunding

### Marketing Partners

- [NaysWorks](https://www.naysworks.com/): Brand activation and live-streaming agency
- [Venture Türkiye](https://www.youtube.com/@VentureTurkiye): Media partner and host of the V-Talk series