Hopper YC Application
San Francisco
Hopper went through Y Combinator in the Fall 2026 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
- Fall 2026
- Industry
- B2BInfrastructure
- Location
- San Francisco
- Team size
- 2
- Status
- Active
- Launched
- 2026
Founders
Pavan KattaFounder/CEO
Jashwanth PedapudiFounder/CTO
What Hopper does
Our customers use Hopper today for two things: replacing GPT-4.1 with Gemma-4 (6x faster), and replacing Elevenlabs with qwen3-tts (8x cheaper).
Hopper's YC application, reconstructed
Y Combinator application
Hopper, Fall 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.
- Founders2
- Company7
- Progress7
- Idea4
- Equity3
- Curious2
- Batch Preference1
Company
Hopper
Fast inference for voice AI infrastructure
We're building Hopper to make voice AI inference radically faster and cheaper. Our users swap out GPT-4.1 for Gemma-4 (which is 6x faster on our infra), and swap Elevenlabs for qwen3-tts (8x cheaper). We provide hosted endpoints for these models so our customers can transition without rewriting their software. Hopper handles deployment, scaling, and the pain of serving modern LLMs and speech models in production.
San Francisco, CA, and we'll stay based here after YC.
Most of our early adopters and other AI infra companies are in SF, and it's the center of AI R&D. Being here means we're close to both customers and the best technical 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the real Hopper YC application?
No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Hopper's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Hopper would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.
What YC batch was Hopper in?
Hopper was part of the Y Combinator Fall 2026 batch.
Who founded Hopper?
Hopper was founded by Pavan Katta, Jashwanth Pedapudi.
What does Hopper do?
Fast inference for voice
How do I read the full reconstructed application?
Create a free Round Funded account. The full 26-answer version of Hopper's application, and every other YC batch, is in YC Insights.
