Cortex AI
YC F25 · Active · Large-scale real-world robot & human data for embodied AI
Competitors
| Company | Category | Status | Program |
|---|---|---|---|
 PhilonShared: purpose robot, general purpose, roboticsActiveAI | AI | Active | YCF25 |
 UltraShared: purpose robot, general purpose, roboticsActiveAI | AI | Active | YCS24 |
 Shepherd RoboticsShared: purpose robot, general purpose, foundation modelActiveAI | AI | Active | YCF26 |
 Aktoria RoboticsShared: robotics, humanActiveOther | Other | Active | YCS26 |
 RLWRLDShared: robotics foundation, developing robotics, foundation modelNot statedAI | AI | Not stated | Plug and Play |
Adjacent
| Company | Category | Status | Program |
|---|---|---|---|
 RelariShared: robotics foundation, foundation model, humanActiveAI | AI | Active | YCW24 |
 Noble MachinesShared: purpose robot, general purpose, industryNot statedOther | Other | Not stated | SPC2024 |
 DarwinShared: general purpose, robotics, humanoidActiveAI | AI | Active | YCF25 |
 SuperRadiantShared: general purpose, robotics, embodiedActiveAI | AI | Active | YCF26 |
 EnactShared: reinforcement learning, robotics, realActiveAI | AI | Active | YCS26 |
Also from F25 in AI
All of F25| Company | Category | Status |
|---|---|---|
 EfferenceAIActiveAI | AI | Active |
 Forge RoboticsA robotics intelligence system for metal fabricationActiveAI | AI | Active |
 hillclimbTraining Data for Recursive Self-ImprovementActiveAI, Devtools | AI, Devtools | Active |
 LightberryRobots with soulActiveAI | AI | Active |
 Piggy RoboticsHumanoid robots that do your chores for the price of an iPhone!ActiveAI | AI | Active |
 SylvianSpecialized AI Agents.InactiveAI | AI | Inactive |
Founders
- Lucas NgooFounder/CEO
About Cortex AI
Cortex AI builds the world’s most diverse and large-scale real-world workplace robot & egocentric dataset — where the physical world becomes the next training and evaluation set for embodied AI. We power frontier labs developing robotics foundation models and general-purpose robots by providing the data they need: 1️⃣ Egocentric Data — real-workplace human video with hand/body pose, depth, and subtask labels. 2️⃣ Robot Data — trajectories collected from manipulators and humanoids in real industry settings. 3️⃣ Human-in-the-Loop Rollouts & Evals — real-world deployments with remote operators who recover robots when they fail, capturing data that feeds back into training and continuously improves models. Additionally, through the Cortex Marketplace, workplaces get paid to host data-collection and evaluation sessions, while labs access the in-the-wild data that truly matters. This draws on Lucas’s previous experience as co-founder of Carousell, a C2C marketplace that scaled to a $1B+ valuation.
- YC batch
- F25 · Fall 2025
- Status, per YC
- Active
- Category
- AI
- Team size
- 3
- Location
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Founded
- 2025
- Checked
- 32m ago
YC tags: Artificial Intelligence, Reinforcement Learning, Robotics
Cortex AI: questions
Which YC batch was Cortex AI in?
Cortex AI was in Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch (F25).
Is Cortex AI still active?
Y Combinator lists Cortex AI as active.
Who founded Cortex AI?
Cortex AI's founders, as listed on its YC page: Lucas Ngoo (Founder/CEO).
Where is Cortex AI based?
Cortex AI lists San Francisco, CA, USA as its location on YC's directory.
Sources: each program's public company list, read twice a week. Not affiliated with Y Combinator or any other program. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.