Fundraising Fox

Guide Labs

YC W24

San Francisco, US · Founded 2023 · Delaware corporation · 6 employees · 4 known investors

Guide Labs is a product-focused research company developing interpretable AI systems that humans and domain experts can understand, steer, and debug. The company builds machine learning models designed for reliability and trustworthiness across applications including language models and image generation.

Also known as Guide Labs Inc · Guide Labs

AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureEnterprise SoftwareArtificial IntelligenceUnited States of AmericaAmerica / Canada

Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (W24)

Guide Labs was founded in 2023 by Julius Adebayo, Fulton Wang, and Aya Abdelsalam Ismail.

JAJulius Adebayo
Julius Adebayoin𝕏Co-Founder / CEOJulius Adebayo is an ML researcher developing interpretable AI systems.
FW
Fulton WangCo-founder
AAAya Abdelsalam Ismail
Aya Abdelsalam IsmailinCo-Founder and CSO

Investors · 4

Y CombinatorSan Francisco · $500K
Initialized CapitalreportedSan Francisco · $1M – $5M
Lombardstreet VenturesreportedWoodside · $500K
Tectonic VenturesreportedCambridge

Funding

SEC filings, press & company announcements

$9.3M disclosed across 1 of 2 rounds · 2024–2025

  • Undisclosed amountseedDec 2025 · 2 sources
    Source ↗
▶$9.3MraisedJun 2024 · 14 investors · Other Technology
Rule 506(b)
Officers, directors & promoters on the filing
  • Julius AdebayoExecutive Officer, Director, Promoter
  • Fulton WangExecutive Officer, Director, Promoter
Offering amount
$9.4M
Amount sold
$9.3M
First sale
Jun 2024
Incorporated
Corporation, Delaware, 2022
Federal exemptions
06b
Full filing on SEC EDGAR ↗

Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.

Company profile

researched Aug 2026

Guide Labs is developing a class of interpretable and auditable AI systems, including foundation models intended to be reliably debugged, trusted, and understood by their users. The company positions interpretability as an inherent property of its models rather than an after-the-fact analysis layer.

Its platform, Clarity, is presented as an interpretable AI platform that traces model behavior back to its sources of influence, with attribution along three dimensions: the prompt, concepts, and training data. For example, users can see which part of a prompt is responsible for a given output. Access to Clarity is offered through the company's website.

Traction

Guide Labs offers access to its Clarity platform, which it introduced in an announcement dated June 3, 2026.", "go_to_market">

▸Full profile — market position, technology

Market position

The company describes its offering as the first inherently interpretable AI platform and states it is backed by leading investors.

Technology

Guide Labs' approach centers on inherently interpretable model architectures rather than post-hoc explanation tools. Its Clarity platform surfaces attributions that map a model's output to specific parts of the input prompt, to underlying concepts, and to training data. The company states it developed the first interpretable generative diffusion model and the first interpretable large language model.

Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.

Key figures

latest reported
HeadcountAug 202613
Research papers on interpretability published at top ML conferences (team)Jan 202624 papers
Team experience in interpretable machine learningJan 202620 years

Company-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.

Competitors · 7

by search overlap
Hugging Face9 shared keywordsHugging Face is a collaboration platform that hosts and provides access to machine learning models, datasets, and applications. It offers both open-source tools for the ML community and paid compute and enterprise solutions for teams building AI applications.
Listen Labs8 shared keywordsListen Labs offers an AI-moderated video interview platform that recruits and interviews verified customers in parallel, then synthesizes the findings into memos, slides, and highlight reels. It is aimed at investors for due diligence, hypothesis testing, and portfolio company support across the deal lifecycle.
Cleanlab7 shared keywordsCleanlab develops machine learning tools for data quality and model improvement, serving enterprises and ML practitioners across industries. The company provides automated solutions for identifying and fixing data errors using confident learning technology.
Literal Labs7 shared keywordsLiteral Labs develops logic-driven AI technology, positioning its work as an alternative approach to machine learning.
Judgment Labs7 shared keywordsJudgment Labs builds an observability and evaluation platform for AI agents, deploying agent "swarms" over production trace data to detect failures, analyze impacted use cases, identify root causes, and test fixes. It integrates with Slack and MCP clients such as Claude, Codex, and Cursor to let engineering teams search agent trajectories, run evaluations, and monitor for model drift and regressions.
Netezza7 shared keywordsIBM is a global technology company whose business spans enterprise software (including Red Hat, HashiCorp, and Confluent), IT infrastructure such as mainframes, servers, and storage, and IT consulting services. The company is also investing heavily in quantum computing and AI-based enterprise offerings, including its Lightwell open-source software security clearinghouse and the Anderon quantum wafer foundry.
NeurIPS5 shared keywordsThe Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Foundation is a non-profit that runs an annual interdisciplinary academic conference on artificial intelligence and machine learning, featuring refereed papers, talks, tutorials, workshops, and an exposition. Founded in 1987, its 2026 edition is held in Sydney with satellite events in Atlanta and Paris.

Companies competing with Guide Labs for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.

Timeline · 1

launches, deals, and filings
Jun 2026
Introduction of Clarity

Guide Labs announced Clarity, a platform it describes as an inherently interpretable AI platform, with features for attributing model outputs to parts of the prompt, concepts, and training data.

source ↗

Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.

Legal entities · 1

corporate structure
Guide LabsDelaware

In the news

Guide Labs Open Sources an Interpretable 8B Language Model - The Silicon Valley Postsvpost.com · Feb 2026Guide Labs debuts a new kind of interpretable LLM | TechCrunchtechcrunch.com · Feb 2026Guide Labs: $9 Million Seed Funding Closed To Build Interpretable Large Language Modelspulse2.com · Dec 2025Guide Labs Raises $9M in Seed Fundingfinsmes.com · Dec 2025Guide Labs has filed a notice of an exempt offering of securities to raise $9,365,587.00 in New Equity Investment. - intelligence360intelligence360.news · Jul 2024Guide Labs: Interpretable foundation modelsycombinator.com · Mar 2024

▸Research sources · 1

primary sources listed

1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

What does Guide Labs do?
Guide Labs builds interpretable, auditable AI systems and foundation models that users can debug, trust, and understand.
Who founded Guide Labs?
Guide Labs was founded by Julius Adebayo, Fulton Wang, Aya Abdelsalam Ismail in 2023.
Who are Guide Labs's investors?
Guide Labs's investors include Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, Lombardstreet Ventures, Tectonic Ventures.
How much funding has Guide Labs raised?
Guide Labs has disclosed $9.3M raised across 1 of its 2 known rounds.
Where is Guide Labs headquartered?
Guide Labs is headquartered in San Francisco, US.