Conifer was founded by Michael Jeffords, Charles Muehlberger in 2025.

Who are Conifer's investors?

Conifer's investors include Lyra Capital Pty Ltd, Perceptive Ventures Management Company, Llc, Vela Partners, Y Combinator, MaC Venture Capital, UpScaleX.

Where is Conifer headquartered?

Conifer is headquartered in San Francisco, US.

Conifer

YC S26

San Francisco, US · Founded 2025 · 4 employees · 6 known investors

Find your way into Conifer

Paths you didn't know you had: your email and LinkedIn already hold routes to the Conifer team. We find them for you
2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: the friend-of-a-friend routes that take hours to manually find through your inbox or LinkedIn
Answers now, not in days: momentum is everything in a raise. Skip asking around whether someone knows someone

Days of research, done the moment you sign in, with every route ranked by how warm it is.

Conifer provides a routing system that runs large language models locally on user machines first, then intelligently routes queries to cloud models only when needed, reducing token costs and improving inference speed through optimized GPU kernels.

Also known as Conifer Solutions, Inc.

AI & Machine Learning Cloud Computing Developer Tools Enterprise Software Artificial Intelligence B2B SecurityUnited States of AmericaAmerica / Canada

Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S26)

Conifer was founded in 2025 by Michael Jeffords and Charles Muehlberger.

Michael Jeffords Co-FounderMichael Jeffords co-founded The HeartCheck Foundation, which expanded free hypertension screening services across multiple barbershops, and has built machine learning and computer vision systems for neurological disease detection. He previously worked as a clinical researcher at the Dell Medical School Institute of Vascular Surgery and University of Tennessee Health Science Center, focusing on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Charles Muehlberger Co-FounderCharles Muehlberger is an engineering researcher with experience in multi-modal inference optimization and physics simulation. He previously worked on edge AI devices for medical applications at DoW and contributed to high-performance electric vehicle engineering at PES.

Ankit SomaniFounder

Yateendra DeshpandeFounder

Yavuz Inan

Investors · 6

Lyra Capital Pty Ltdlisted by Lyra Capital Pty LtdSydney

How we know: Lyra Capital Pty Ltd's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us

Perceptive Ventures Management Company, Llclisted by Perceptive Ventures Management Company, LlcLaguna Beach

How we know: Perceptive Ventures Management Company, Llc's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us

Vela Partnerslisted by Vela PartnersSan Francisco · $100K – $500K

Y Combinatorlisted by Y CombinatorSan Francisco · $500K

How we know: the Y Combinator directory · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us

MaC Venture CapitalreportedLos Angeles · $1M – $4M

How we know: open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us

UpScaleXreported

How we know: Y Combinator's founder network · Not right? Tell us

Related companies · 5

ZeropathZeroPath provides an application security platform that consolidates findings from multiple security scanning tools (SAST, SCA, IaC, secrets detection) into a unified dashboard with AI-driven risk scoring and prioritization for enterprise security teams.

authzedAuthZed provides authorization infrastructure that automatically evaluates access permissions based on team and organizational hierarchies, eliminating the need for manual permission syncing and background jobs. The platform serves enterprise software builders who need dynamic access control that updates in real-time as team memberships change.

TinfoilTinfoil develops secure hardware and systems, with expertise in privacy and security protocols.

Squire.aiSquire is a developer tool that generates pull request descriptions, conducts code reviews, and writes code to address feedback from reviews.

GolfGolf provides governance and security monitoring for AI agents and MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections in enterprise environments. The platform discovers, enforces policies, and audits data access across third-party AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and Copilot that operate outside traditional gateways.

Companies working in the same space as Conifer.

Legal entities · 1

corporate structure

Conifer Solutions, Inc.

In the news

Conifer: Local-first least cost routing systemycombinator.com · Jul 2026

Frequently asked questions

What does Conifer do?: Conifer provides a routing system that runs large language models locally on user machines first, then intelligently routes queries to cloud models only when needed, reducing token costs and improving inference speed through optimized GPU kernels.
Who founded Conifer?: Conifer was founded by Michael Jeffords, Charles Muehlberger in 2025.
Who are Conifer's investors?: Conifer's investors include Lyra Capital Pty Ltd, Perceptive Ventures Management Company, Llc, Vela Partners, Y Combinator, MaC Venture Capital, UpScaleX.
Where is Conifer headquartered?: Conifer is headquartered in San Francisco, US.