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Ontora
YC X26San Francisco, US · Founded 2026 · 3 employees · 5 known investors
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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.
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (X26)
Ontora was founded in 2026 by Leon Iwanowitsch, Maximilian Arnold, and David Korn.
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Leon IwanowitschCo-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 ArnoldCo-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 KornCo-FounderDavid Korn previously worked on AI projects at Google and studied computer science at CODE University. He founded beglaubigt.de, a YC F24 company.
Investors · 5
Y Combinatorlisted by Y CombinatorSan Francisco · $500K
How we know: the Y Combinator directory · a partner's Signal profile · open dataset · 5k.vc investor directory · Not right? Tell us
AI Strategy InstitutereportedGräfelfing
How we know: Y Combinator's founder network · Not right? Tell us
Andreessen HorowitzreportedMenlo Park · $500K – $50M
How we know: Y Combinator's founder network · Not right? Tell us
Combination VCreported$54K – $216K
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Robin CapitalreportedHamburg
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The YC application· 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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Legal entities · 1
corporate structureOntora Inc.
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, AI Strategy Institute, Andreessen Horowitz, Combination VC, Robin Capital.
- Where is Ontora headquartered?
- Ontora is headquartered in San Francisco, US.