A whistleblower alleges YC startup Delve repackaged Sim.ai’s open source SimStudio as its own Pathways product, raising Apache licence compliance questions and exposing sharp irony for a startup selling compliance software.
YC startup Delve is facing serious allegations that it forked Sim.ai’s open-source agent-building platform SimStudio and presented the modified software as its own proprietary no-code tool, Pathways, without attribution or a commercial agreement.
According to anonymous whistleblower DeepDelver, Delve claimed the tool was built in-house. However, alleged evidence suggests Pathways was a modified copy of SimStudio, which, if proven, could amount to an Apache licence violation due to the failure to credit the original developer.
Emir Karabeg, Founder and CEO, Sim.ai, confirmed that Delve had no licence agreement whatsoever with his company. “We knew they planned to use Sim for something and later tried unsuccessfully to sell them an agreement,”
“I didn’t realize they were going to sell it out of the box as a stand-alone solution.”
The controversy is especially striking because Sim.ai was reportedly a paying Delve customer, while Delve allegedly used Sim.ai’s open-source technology without reciprocal payment. Both startups are Y Combinator alumni, amplifying the fallout within founder circles.
The alleged conduct is also said to predate Delve’s $32 million Series A led by Insight Partners, raising questions around investor due diligence. Compounding the scrutiny, references to Pathways have reportedly been scrubbed from Delve’s website, alongside several other pages.
Karabeg added: “I was consoling my friends at Delve after the first post was released last week, but since I found out about this news we haven’t been in contact.”
The allegations have also triggered heavy backlash on X, where the issue is trending with a community note.
