Riften was founded by Carl Stauffer in 2026.

Who are Riften's investors?

Riften's investors include Vela Partners, Y Combinator.

Where is Riften headquartered?

Riften is headquartered in San Francisco, US.

Riften

San Francisco, US · Founded 2026 · 5 employees · 2 known investors

Find your way into Riften

171 people in our graph share verified history with the Riften team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Erin Price-Wrightunlockedknows Carl Stauffer · together at Andreessen Horowitz (overlapped)

×10knows the team · via Andreessen Horowitz

knows the team · via Jefferson Lab

Riften provides a routing layer that sits between a company's applications and large language model APIs, directing each request to the least expensive capable model and using self-hosted open-weight models where possible to reduce inference costs. It also uses the resulting task data to train private, company-owned models on recurring work, serving businesses that run AI-powered applications.

AI & Machine Learning Data & Infrastructure Developer Tools Enterprise Software Reinforcement Learning Open Source Infrastructure AIUnited States of AmericaAmerica / Canada

Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S26)

Riften was founded in 2026 by Carl Stauffer.

Carl Stauffer in 𝕏FounderCarl Stauffer is the founder and CEO of Riften, which routes requests between applications and language model APIs to lower inference costs. He previously worked as a Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir and as a nuclear researcher at Jefferson Lab, and studied computer science and applied mathematics at Johns Hopkins.

Investors · 2

Vela PartnersSan Francisco · $100K – $500K

Y CombinatorSan Francisco · $500K

In the news

Riften: Route every AI request. Build the models your company owns.ycombinator.com · Aug 2026

Frequently asked questions

What does Riften do?: Riften provides a routing layer that sits between a company's applications and large language model APIs, directing each request to the least expensive capable model and using self-hosted open-weight models where possible to reduce inference costs. It also uses the resulting task data to train private, company-owned models on recurring work, serving businesses that run AI-powered applications.
Who founded Riften?: Riften was founded by Carl Stauffer in 2026.
Who are Riften's investors?: Riften's investors include Vela Partners, Y Combinator.
Where is Riften headquartered?: Riften is headquartered in San Francisco, US.