Cardinal

Cardinal is an AI revenue platform for go-to-market and sales teams, marketed under the positioning "AI platform for precision outbound." The product lets users define a target list, deploy AI "revenue agents" that each run a distinct motion — outreach, follow-up, research, scheduling and CRM syncing — then measure results and iterate on the workflows that perform.

The platform's stated capabilities include mapping a total addressable market and finding precise leads (for example, enriching attendees of a conference or invitees to a dinner), continuously monitoring what prospects post and engage with on social media, generating account- and person-specific snippets based on commonalities between the seller's team and the prospect, building end-to-end outbound workflows spanning email and LinkedIn, and capturing inbound signals such as website visitors, product signups, social media likes and comments, and ad impressions, then qualifying those contacts into sequences.

The company frames the problem as high-precision outbound normally requiring 10 or more stitched-together tools plus a dedicated GTM engineer, work that Cardinal's agents are intended to perform within a single platform. The site also publishes a "playbook" of example agent workflows, such as emailing in-ICP website visitors in real time, reacting to job-change and promotion signals, and cross-referencing conference attendee lists against target accounts.

Founding story

Founders Devi Jha (Founder/CEO) and Jianna Liu (Founder/CTO) had previously worked together on Leafpress, an energy software company in Y Combinator's S23 batch that closed enterprise customers including Lindt and Honeywell through cold outbound and was acquired by Johnson Controls. Jha left Harvard, where he studied computer science; Liu graduated from MIT in computer science and previously worked on software teams at Meta, DoorDash and Nvidia. Their experience running outbound at their prior company informs Cardinal's focus on precision outbound workflows.

Business model

Cardinal sells a software platform to companies' sales and go-to-market functions, marketed through a book-a-demo motion with a separate enterprise offering. The site presents the product as a consolidation of multiple point tools — list building, prospecting, email infrastructure and sequencing — into one connected platform, with customers describing it as replacing the work of roughly 7-10 separate tools and of a full-time GTM engineer.

Not disclosed in available sources; the website directs prospective customers to book a demo rather than publishing pricing.

Traction

The company states it runs outbound for more than 40 Y Combinator companies, naming Mintlify, Greptile, Luminai, Deepgram and Giga among users. Published customer testimonials come from founders at Kaizen, Voxel Energy, Mintlify, Cardinal Gray and Imprezia; one customer reports booking over $70,000 in revenue within a couple of weeks, and Leafpress reports booking 30 meetings from about an hour of setup work. Third-party commentary notes the absence of a public pricing page, live demo or published usage metrics.

Latest developments

Cardinal launched publicly as part of Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch and is listed as active. It is hiring in San Francisco for a Founding Engineer ($200K-$250K, 1.00% equity), a Founding AE ($100K-$150K, 0.10%-1.00%), a Head of Design ($120K-$150K) and a Founding Product Engineer ($150K-$215K, 0.50%-1.00%).