Cortex AI
Large-scale real-world robot & human data for embodied AI
Founders
- Lucas NgooFounder/CEO
Same space
Competitors
Closest in what they build, same category.
Adjacent
Overlapping tags, a different niche.
Aktoria RoboticsS26Human as API for robotsShared: roboticsActive
Moving AtomsS26Virtual Reality for Training RobotsShared: roboticsActive
OS3S26Affordable, intelligent humanoid robots built to deploy at scaleShared: roboticsActive
TwolabsX26Humanoid robot platform for builders.Shared: roboticsActive
Waddle LabsS26LLMs that control robotsShared: roboticsActive
Also from F25 in AI
Batchmates in Fall 2025.
EfferenceF25Active
Forge RoboticsF25A robotics intelligence system for metal fabricationActive
hillclimbF25Training Data for Recursive Self-ImprovementActive
LightberryF25Robots with soulActive
PhilonF25General Purpose RobotsActive
Piggy RoboticsF25Humanoid robots that do your chores for the price of an iPhone!Active
About Cortex AI
Cortex AI builds the world’s most diverse and large-scale real-world workplace robot & egocentric dataset — where the physical world becomes the next training and evaluation set for embodied AI. We power frontier labs developing robotics foundation models and general-purpose robots by providing the data they need: 1️⃣ Egocentric Data — real-workplace human video with hand/body pose, depth, and subtask labels. 2️⃣ Robot Data — trajectories collected from manipulators and humanoids in real industry settings. 3️⃣ Human-in-the-Loop Rollouts & Evals — real-world deployments with remote operators who recover robots when they fail, capturing data that feeds back into training and continuously improves models. Additionally, through the Cortex Marketplace, workplaces get paid to host data-collection and evaluation sessions, while labs access the in-the-wild data that truly matters. This draws on Lucas’s previous experience as co-founder of Carousell, a C2C marketplace that scaled to a $1B+ valuation.
San Francisco, CA, USA
Cortex AI: questions
Which YC batch was Cortex AI in?
Cortex AI was in Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch (F25).
Is Cortex AI still active?
Y Combinator lists Cortex AI as active.
Who founded Cortex AI?
Cortex AI's founders, as listed on its YC page: Lucas Ngoo (Founder/CEO).
Where is Cortex AI based?
Cortex AI lists San Francisco, CA, USA as its location on YC's directory.
Not affiliated with Y Combinator. From YC's public directory. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.