Fern
YC W26Founded 2025 · 2 employees · 3 known investors
Fern develops high-fidelity, custom robot world models for scaling the evaluation and training of robot policies. The product serves robotics teams building and deploying autonomous systems.
Also known as Fern (Formerly Ishiki Labs) · Ishiki Labs · ProactiveAI
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (W26)
Fern was founded in 2025 by Amit Yadav and Robert Xu.
AY
Amit YadavinCofounderAmit Yadav is cofounder and CEO of Ishiki Labs. He previously worked as a research scientist at Meta, contributing to LLaMA and video AI systems for smart glasses, and holds a PhD from Purdue University with research published at major computer vision and machine learning conferences.
Investors · 3
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$9M disclosed across 1 round · 2025
- $9MSeries AApr 2025 · 3 sources
Bessemer Venture Partners (lead), Y Combinator (lead)
Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Images
Competitors · 3
by search overlap
Amazon4 shared keywordsAmazon operates the largest online retail marketplace in the world alongside Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, plus advertising, logistics and streaming media businesses.
Postman4 shared keywordsPostman is an API platform that helps developers build, test, and manage APIs throughout their lifecycle. It serves organizations across industries, including 98% of the Fortune 500, and provides tooling for API development, quality assurance, and organizational governance.
Shapes Inc.3 shared keywordsShapes builds general-purpose social AI agents ("shapes") that users can steer for any use case and embed into existing social settings for natural, everyday interactions. It positions its technology around social interactions with AGI within the AI/consumer space.
Companies competing with Fern for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does Fern do?
- Fern develops high-fidelity, custom robot world models for scaling the evaluation and training of robot policies. The product serves robotics teams building and deploying autonomous systems.
- Who founded Fern?
- Fern was founded by Amit Yadav, Robert Xu in 2025.
- Who are Fern's investors?
- Fern's investors include Y Combinator, Bessemer Venture Partners, V1 VC.
- How much funding has Fern raised?
- Fern has disclosed $9M raised across 1 round.