Understudy Labs
YC S26San Francisco, US · Founded 2026 · 2 employees · 1 known investors
Understudy Labs offers an open-source toolkit that captures traces from LLM production workflows, benchmarks and A/B tests cheaper or open-weight models against them, and fine-tunes and deploys specialist models that users own and can host anywhere. It is aimed at developers and teams looking to migrate from proprietary LLMs to models they control.
AdTechAI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareArtificial IntelligenceOpen SourceAIMLUnited States of AmericaAmerica / Canada
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S26)
Understudy Labs was founded in 2026 by Luis Manrique and Aamir Poonawalla.
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Luis Manriquein𝕏Co-Founder & CEOHe previously worked as a founding member at Gumloop, where he contributed to technical and sales efforts, led machine learning and consumer AI initiatives as an early product manager at Instacart's Carrot AI division, and co-founded Ones and Zeros, an LLM-based SQL tool. Earlier roles include positions at Google across ads machine learning and programmatic platforms following an acquisition from Wildfire, as well as SVP of Solutions at VideoAmp.
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Aamir PoonawallainCo-Founder & CTOAamir Poonawalla spent nine years at Instacart building ads infrastructure, machine learning systems, and auction platforms, and holds an MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. He is now founding Understudy Labs as a returning Y Combinator founder.
Investors · 1
The YC application· Summer 2026 batch
Frequently asked questions
- What does Understudy Labs do?
- Understudy Labs offers an open-source toolkit that captures traces from LLM production workflows, benchmarks and A/B tests cheaper or open-weight models against them, and fine-tunes and deploys specialist models that users own and can host anywhere. It is aimed at developers and teams looking to migrate from proprietary LLMs to models they control.
- Who founded Understudy Labs?
- Understudy Labs was founded by Luis Manrique, Aamir Poonawalla in 2026.
- Who are Understudy Labs's investors?
- Understudy Labs's investors include Y Combinator.
- Where is Understudy Labs headquartered?
- Understudy Labs is headquartered in San Francisco, US.