Activeloop YC Application

Summer 2018Active

Activeloop went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2018 batch as a B2B company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2018
Industry: B2BInfrastructure
Team size: 15
Status: Active
Launched: 2018

Founders

Davit BuniatyanFounder

What Activeloop does

We provide a simple API for creating, storing, versioning, and collaborating on multi-modal AI datasets of any size. With Activeloop's open-core stack, you can rapidly transform and stream data while training models at scale. Deep Lake powers foundational model training by acting as a vector database with significant benefits, such as (1) the ability to use multi-modal datasets to fine-tune your own LLM models, (2) storing both the embeddings and the original data with automatic version control, so no embedding re-computation is needed (3) truly serverless service with no vendor lock-in. How cool is that? GitHub loves us - we're one of the fastest-growing libraries there, and we're used by little-known companies like Google, Waymo, and Intel. No big deal. Our founding team hails from places like Princeton, Stanford, Google, and Tesla, and we're backed by Y Combinator & other Silicon Valley heavyweights. Activeloop is hiring, and we want you! Check out our open roles on our YC page and join the fun. 10-min demo: Whitepaper:

Activeloop's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Activeloop, Summer 2018 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Activeloop

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Database for AI

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We built Deep Lake, a database designed for AI applications that lets users create, store, version, and collaborate on multi-modal datasets at scale. It streams data directly into training pipelines, supports vector search, stores embeddings alongside original data with automatic versioning, and works serverless without vendor lock-in.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live in Mountain View, CA, and plan to base the company here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Mountain View is where the founders live and where the AI infrastructure ecosystem is dense. Staying here lets us easily collaborate with early users and talent.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Activeloop YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Activeloop's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Activeloop would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.