Fern was founded by Amit Yadav, Robert Xu in 2025.

Who are Fern's investors?

Fern's investors include Y Combinator, Capitalize VC, OUTBOUND CAPITAL, V1 VC.

Fern

Founded 2025 · 2 employees · 4 known investors

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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 Ishiki Labs Inc. · Fern (Formerly Ishiki Labs) · Ishiki Labs · ProactiveAI · ProactiveAI, Ishiki Labs, Fern (Formerly Ishiki Labs)

AI & Machine Learning Data & Infrastructure Deep Tech Enterprise Software Robotics Infrastructure

Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (W26)

Fern was founded in 2025 by Amit Yadav and Robert Xu.

Amit Yadav CofounderAmit 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.

Robert Xu Co-FounderRobert Xu is co-founder and CTO of Ishiki Labs, and previously held roles focused on multi-modal AI and AR glasses development at Meta, as well as research infrastructure work at Citadel Securities.

Investors · 4

Y Combinatorlisted by Y CombinatorSan Francisco · $500K

How we know: the Y Combinator directory · funding news · press coverage · Not right? Tell us

Capitalize VCreportedChicago · $100K – $200K

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

OUTBOUND CAPITALreportedSaratoga Springs

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

V1 VCreportedBoulder · $100K – $300K

How we know: funding news · Not right? Tell us

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Founder mafia

2 people who came through Fern went on to found or lead other companies.

Amit YadavCEOFounded Fern Robert XuFounderFounded Fern

Related companies · 8

EncordEncord provides a data platform for developing and deploying multimodal AI systems, serving AI development teams at scale across training and production environments.

Dreamscale LabsDreamscale Labs operates a cloud inference platform that lets robotics developers run physical AI models remotely rather than on hardware-limited on-robot GPUs, delivering real-time latency. The company serves the robotics and AI infrastructure market.

Boost RoboticsBoost Robotics builds autonomous robots that inspect and maintain data center infrastructure. The company serves data center operators to ensure continuous facility operations.

Amazon MusicAmazon operates the largest online retail marketplace in the world alongside Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, plus advertising, logistics and streaming media businesses.

HubHub operates a data collection and annotation platform that gathers real-world data from physical environments to train embodied AI and robotics models. The company manages a global network of verified small and medium-sized businesses across multiple sectors to capture training data through a standardized pipeline.

PostmanPostman 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.

Agency Tool CompanyAgency Tool Company builds infrastructure for robotics teams to build, deploy, and manage fielded robots, including ATC Deploy (over-the-air software updates and fleet management for robot fleets) and ATC Build (a CI runner backed by hosted NVIDIA Jetson embedded compute). Its tools target robotics companies operating real-world robots and integrate with CI systems like GitHub Actions and GitLab CI.

Shapes Inc.Shapes 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 working in the same space as Fern.

Legal entities · 1

corporate structure

Ishiki Labs Inc.

In the news

Fern – Realtime Socially Aware AI for Meetingsycombinator.com · Feb 2026

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, Capitalize VC, OUTBOUND CAPITAL, V1 VC.