Ontora
YC X26San Francisco, US Β· Founded 2026 Β· 3 employees Β· 1 known investors
Ontora provides an AI agent that conducts parallel interviews with employees across an organization to map business processes and identify bottlenecks in operations, sales, and finance. The platform accelerates process discovery and operational transformation by extracting undocumented workflows from employee knowledge.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaSRobotic Process AutomationEnterpriseAIUnited States of AmericaAmerica / Canada
Founders & leadershipΒ· Y Combinator alumni (X26)
Ontora was founded in 2026 by Leon Iwanowitsch, Maximilian Arnold, and David Korn.
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Leon IwanowitschinπCo-FounderLeon Iwanowitsch studied at the University of St. Gallen and organized a large early-stage startup conference in Europe. He has experience in fundraising, angel investing, and AI consulting for enterprise clients.
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Maximilian ArnoldinπCo-FounderMaximilian Arnold studied computer science at CODE University and Stanford. He worked as an AI engineer at Porsche focused on procurement and established an honors exchange partnership with Stanford.
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David KorninπFounderDavid Korn previously worked on AI projects at Google and studied computer science at CODE University. He founded beglaubigt.de, a YC F24 company.
Investors Β· 1
The YC applicationΒ· Spring 2026 batch
Alumni Q&A
- How did your company get started? (i.e., How did the founders meet? How did you come up with the idea? How did you decide to be a founder?)
- The three founders previously worked in process optimization at Porsche, data pipelines in finance, and AI automation at consultancies, and each observed that important operational knowledge stays with individual employees. They decided to leave their jobs and start the company after a tour of fast-growing Stockholm startups organized by one of them.
- What is the core problem you are solving? Why is this a big problem? What made you decide to work on it?
- The founders note that the knowledge leadership needs is spread across many employees, with no practical way to consult everyone, leaving decisions based on incomplete information or costly consultants. Ontora's AI agent holds conversations with every employee within hours to surface what they do and where they get stuck, producing synthesized answers, process maps, and an automation roadmap with ROI, plus an ongoing operational context usable by people and AI agents.
- What is your long-term vision? If you truly succeed, what will be different about the world?
- The founders aim to make operational knowledge held by employees accessible in hours rather than months, supporting cost reduction, post-merger integration, and AI adoption at lower cost than traditional consulting.
Summarized from the founders' answers on their Y Combinator profile.
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Competitors Β· 3
by search overlapNatoora4 shared keywordsNatoora sources fruit and vegetables by working directly with growers, emphasizing seasonal produce, heritage varieties, and traceable origins. It supplies chefs and consumers seeking flavor, nutrition, and sustainable farming practices, operating in the food supply and distribution sector.
LeadIQ3 shared keywordsLeadIQ offers a company search tool that provides B2B company profiles with data such as revenue, employee count, funding, and contact information to help sales teams find decision makers and build pipeline.
Antora3 shared keywordsAntora manufactures thermal battery systems for long-duration energy storage, serving manufacturers and data centers seeking to tap into low-cost renewable power. The company designs and produces American-made thermal batteries at scale to provide affordable, reliable energy storage for industrial and large-scale energy users.
Companies competing with Ontora for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does Ontora do?
- Ontora provides an AI agent that conducts parallel interviews with employees across an organization to map business processes and identify bottlenecks in operations, sales, and finance. The platform accelerates process discovery and operational transformation by extracting undocumented workflows from employee knowledge.
- Who founded Ontora?
- Ontora was founded by Leon Iwanowitsch, Maximilian Arnold, David Korn in 2026.
- Who are Ontora's investors?
- Ontora's investors include Y Combinator.
- Where is Ontora headquartered?
- Ontora is headquartered in San Francisco, US.