Other
May 2026A third-party profile described Epicenter as a solo operation, indicating key-person dependency risk as the company remains very small.
SourceOpen-source, local-first apps that share a memory.
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
Epicenter (YC S25) is a San Francisco-based, open-source local-first software startup building a shared-memory workspace for notes, transcripts, chat histories, and code. The ecosystem centers on plain text + SQLite files owned by the user, with Whispering as the first widely launched app and epicenter.sh as a local-first assistant for code and context.
Primary product
A local-first, open-source shared-memory workspace ecosystem (starting with Whispering and epicenter.sh) built on plain text and SQLite.
Founded
2025
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
1-10
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
Local-first productivity software
Offices
San Francisco, California, United States
Business model
open-source software
self-hosted software
usage-based transcription via user-owned API keys
Funding
Stage
Seed
Total raised
$500K
Latest round
Seed · Sep 2025
Latest amount
$500K
Sep 2025 · Y Combinator
People & investors
Leadership
Founder
Work & culture
Mission-driven, open-source, privacy-first, and local-first. The company emphasizes data ownership, transparency, user agency, and building in public.
Product & market
Pricing
Open-source/free software with direct provider pass-through for transcription; Whispering supports free local transcription and paid cloud transcription via the user's own API keys.
Differentiators
- —User-owned plain text and SQLite storage
- —Shared memory layer across multiple apps
- —Local-first and offline-capable by default
- —Open source with self-hosting support
- —No middleman servers for transcription data
- —Direct provider access via user-owned API keys
- —MIT/AGPL licensing split between toolkit and apps
Technology
TypeScript
Svelte 5
Rust
Bun
SQLite
Yjs
Tauri
Markdown
CRDTs
Cloudflare Workers
IndexedDB
local storage
Customers
hackers
developers
privacy enthusiasts
open-source/local-first builders
people who read deeply, write to think, and build to understand
Competitors
Notion
Mem
Obsidian
Wispr Flow
Superwhisper
Scale & contact
Signals & risks
Latest news
Startuply.vc · May 2026
Third-party profile covering Epicenter's product approach, solo-founder status, and publicly known investors.
Y Combinator on LinkedIn · Aug 2025
YC publicly congratulated Epicenter on launch and reiterated the open-source, plain-text, user-owned memory-layer thesis.
Epicenter on LinkedIn · Aug 2025
Epicenter announced its YC directory listing and restated the shared-memory local-first positioning.
Y Combinator · Aug 2025
Official Launch YC post introducing Epicenter as a shared-memory, local-first open-source workspace and database for your mind.
Y Combinator
Official launch page for Whispering, the first app in the Epicenter ecosystem and a key product milestone.
Jobs and careers at Epicenter
0 jobs at Epicenter
No open positions
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