Sepal AI YC Application

Summer 2024Acquired

Sepal AI went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2024 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 2024
Industry: B2B
Team size: 15
Status: Acquired
Launched: 2024

Founders

Robi LinFounder
Kat HuFounder

What Sepal AI does

Sepal is a data research company on a mission to advance human knowledge and capabilities through safe AI. We partner with the world’s leading AI labs and enterprises to help their models get better at the tasks people actually want them to do. We’ve built a Cloud-Native Agent Dataset Factory which turns the process of generating evaluation and training data from manual, inconsistent, and labor-intensive into something automated, standardized, and scalable. Sepal AI was founded in 2024 by engineers and operators from Vercel and Turing. We went through Y Combinator, raised several million dollars from leading investors, and already count multiple Fortune 500s and top AI research labs as paying customers.

Sepal AI's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Sepal AI, Summer 2024 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Sepal AI

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Data Development for Advanced AI

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

We've built a Cloud-Native Agent Dataset Factory that automates creating evaluation and training data for AI models. Instead of manual, inconsistent data labeling, our product standardizes and scales data generation via autonomous agents. It helps AI labs and enterprises improve the tasks their models actually face in practice.

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

We live and work in San Francisco, CA. The company is based here and will remain based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco has the best access to AI research labs, enterprise clients, and experienced engineers. Being here keeps us close to our target customers and talent pool.

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 Sepal AI YC application?

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