LayerZero Co-Founders Honored with the Dively Entrepreneur Award
Recognizing Visionary Leadership in Mission-Critical Power
Cleveland, Ohio — November 10, 2025 — LayerZero Power Systems is proud to share that our co-founders, Milind Bhanoo and Jim Galm, were honored with the Dively Entrepreneur Award by the Harvard Business School of Northeast Ohio. This distinguished recognition celebrates leaders whose innovations, integrity, and vision have made a lasting impact on the region’s business and technology community.
The award ceremony was held at the Union Club in Downtown Cleveland, where regional business and academic leaders gathered to celebrate entrepreneurship and innovation. The evening featured:
- A cocktail reception bringing together the local business and technology community.
- A dinner and award presentation honoring outstanding entrepreneurs.
- A fireside chat with Clay Rankin, Managing Director and Founder of North Coast Ventures.
About the Dively Entrepreneur Award
The Dively Entrepreneur Award is granted annually to an individual or company in Northeast Ohio that demonstrates substantial success as an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial enterprise. Honorees are evaluated on:
- A history of innovation in product development or service delivery.
- Proven financial performance and sustained business growth.
- The achievement of a significant position in the marketplace.
This year’s recognition highlights LayerZero’s continued commitment to building reliable and technologically advanced power systems that enable mission-critical operations across the globe.
Honoring Entrepreneurial Leadership
Milind and Jim were recognized for their decades-long leadership and commitment to innovation, and their enduring impact in building LayerZero into a global leader in mission-critical power reliability. What began as a bold idea in a garage has become a thriving company serving industries where uptime is essential.
LayerZero’s continued success exemplifies:
- Innovation in power reliability, setting new benchmarks for safety and transparency.
- Local job creation and workforce development, strengthening Ohio’s industrial and technology economy.
- Global influence with community roots, showing that world-class innovation can thrive in Northeast Ohio.
In his remarks, Milind humbly described the honor as “completely unexpected,” while illustrating LayerZero’s mission through a vivid thought experiment.
“We prevent a blink-of-an-eye power outage from shutting down mission-critical processes,” said Milind.
He explained how LayerZero’s Static Transfer Switch (STS) transfers power between two sources faster than the human eye can blink, ensuring reliability at institutions like data centers and financial networks.
“The Static Transfer Switch does that without any moving parts,” said Milind. “What we did was make the most reliable and best Static Transfer Switch the world has ever seen. I can say that — hands down.”
Milind credited Jim for helping to make that vision a reality, calling him “an engineer’s engineer.”
A Cleveland Success Story
Founded in 2001 by Case Western Reserve University alumni Milind Bhanoo and Jim Galm, LayerZero Power Systems began when the two built their first prototype in a garage, powered by a washer and dryer outlet.
“We were either going to be successful or we were going to be successful,” Jim said, describing how they self-funded LayerZero with their own savings and determination.
Today, that vision has become a reality, with LayerZero growing into a global leader in mission-critical power technology, employing more than 400 people across its Aurora and Streetsboro, Ohio, facilities.
LayerZero’s products power some of the world’s most advanced data centers, semiconductor fabs, financial institutions, and AI computing environments, including:
- Static Transfer Switches (STS)
- Power Distribution Units (PDUs)
- Remote Power Panels (RPPs)
A Year of Continual Growth
From those humble beginnings, LayerZero has grown into a 400-person company with facilities in Aurora and Streetsboro, Ohio, and a global reputation for reliability. In 2025, the company entered a new chapter through a strategic partnership with Advent International, fueling accelerated growth, expansion, and creating new opportunities for local talent across Northeast Ohio.
Recent milestones include:
- A major expansion of the Philipp Parkway facility in Streetsboro, adding 120,000 square feet of manufacturing and engineering space.
- The creation of over 500 new full-time jobs, reinforcing LayerZero’s commitment to growing Ohio’s advanced manufacturing sector.
- Investment in new product lines and production capabilities to meet the rising demand for AI-ready, mission-critical power infrastructure.
This partnership reflects LayerZero’s continued mission to support local manufacturing, create opportunities for Ohio’s skilled workforce, and deliver the most reliable power systems in the world.
Looking Ahead
Today, LayerZero Power Systems continues to grow with purpose. With the ongoing support of Advent International and the dedication of our talented team, we are expanding globally while remaining firmly rooted in Northeast Ohio.
As Milind and Jim accepted the Dively Entrepreneur Award, they did so with deep gratitude for their team, their partners, and the community that supported them.
“We think of ourselves as undeserving, but obviously, you folks don’t, so we’ll run with it,” Milind joked.
This honor serves as a reminder of what defines LayerZero: visionary leadership, a commitment to innovation, and a mission to deliver power reliability to the industries that power the future.