Y Combinator backs US AI startup ByteAsk in $1m round
ByteAsk was founded by Anirudha Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, who previously co-founded LawSutra AI.
AI coding startup ByteAsk has attracted $1 million in funding from Y Combinator, Entrepreneur First, and angel investors. The company is developing AI coding agents tailored for C and C++ developers in high-stakes industries like defence, aerospace, robotics, high-frequency trading, automotive, and semiconductors. ByteAsk, founded in June 2026, is based in San Francisco with offices in the US and India. They were chosen for Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch.
Anirudha Kulkarni, the cofounder and CEO, explained that the company saw an opportunity to address the limitations of generic AI coding agents for C and C++ developers. He emphasized the need for a technically challenging solution with significant global potential. Kulkarni also noted that while AI has improved software development, it hasn't fully solved the engineering challenges faced by C and C++ developers.
ByteAsk's founders, Kulkarni and Pratyush Saini, previously founded LawSutra AI, which was acquired by legal research firm Manupatra within four months of its launch. Both are IIT Delhi computer science graduates. They launched ByteAsk to tackle the limitations of generic AI coding tools in C and C++ environments, where reliability, performance, and correctness are crucial.
The startup plans to use the new capital to grow its engineering and research teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, invest in GPU compute and training data, and develop enterprise-grade security, privacy, and on-premises infrastructure for sensitive industries. ByteAsk expects engineers to use their product six times more intensively than a comparable open-source coding agent, with weekly active users doubling every week.
On internal benchmarks, ByteAsk's smaller model resolves 89% of technical tickets, compared to 61% for the top frontier model without the specific environment. The company is also developing a post-training approach for C++, aiming to release one of the first language models specifically trained for the language within six to eight months.
Y Combinator partner Nemil Dalal praised Kulkarni and Saini's passion, authenticity, and technical expertise, highlighting ByteAsk's unique approach to improving productivity for C and C++ developers.
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- AI coding startup ByteAsk raises $1 million from YC, Entrepreneur First economictimes.indiatimes.com
