See where YC founders go after their startup is acquired or shut down
105
unique founder journeys
Last updated: July 14, 2026.
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Still running OpenAI as CEO.
Steered OpenAI for one extraordinary weekend in 2023.
Applied evaluations
Worked on strategy, then moved to Google Workspace GenAI.
Member of Technical Staff
MTS on prototyping team
Product engineer building Claude APIs/SDKs & platform
Moved from startup operations into OpenAI in 2026.
Member of Technical Staff
MTS on search evals, RAG & agentic AI
Working on Anthropic’s compute team with Tom Brown.
Worked on post-training and alignment, then founded Linzumi.
Distinguished Engineer leading robotics & next-gen consumer hardware
Led technical work on the GPT-3 API and Applied AI.
Co-founder, Chief Compute Officer.
Claude Code TL / Member of Technical Staff
Research Engineer; core contributor to o1 and GPT-4V
MTS on core products
TUI rendering for Claude Code
Member of Technical Staff
Showing 20 of 105 founders
Roles Then & Now
Once CEOs & CTOs, everyone is a Member of Technical Staff now.
YC batches
Counting each YC chapter by batch year shows when these founders came through. A founder with two YC startups appears in both years.
Startups.RIP
Startups don’t work for a range of reasons, including timing. Explore the database to find already validated ideas that are ready for another shot.
Built by Oscar and Javokhir. A Startups.RIP production.
