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May 2026PitchBook labeled Hegel AI as 'out of business' in its 2026 company profile, which conflicts with other public pages and more recent activity. Treat as a risk/conflict signal rather than a confirmed shutdown.
SourceCompany research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
Hegel AI is a YC S23, developer-tools startup building an open-source platform for evaluating, testing, and monitoring generative AI applications and LLM workflows. Its core product is PromptTools, a self-hostable SDK/playground for prompts, models, and vector databases; public sources disagree on HQ/status, but the company remains publicly active in 2026.
Primary product
PromptTools — an open-source SDK/playground for experimenting with, evaluating, and monitoring prompts, LLMs, and vector databases.
Founded
2023
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States (LinkedIn); YC also lists New York City, NY.
Team size
1-10
Industry
Technology, Information and Internet
Sub-industry
Developer tools for large language model evaluation and monitoring
Business model
open-source
subscription SaaS
enterprise support
Funding
Stage
pre-seed
Latest round
Pre-Seed · Jan 2024
Latest amount
$600K
Jan 2024 · O'Shaughnessy Ventures
Sep 2023
Jan 2023
People & investors
Leadership
Steve Krawczyk
Co-founder
Kevin Tse
Co-founder
Work & culture
Open-source, developer-first, notebook/local-first, and community-oriented; the company appears very small, with manual beta onboarding and an emphasis on Discord/GitHub-driven adoption.
Compensation
No public compensation data found. Public hiring signals suggest an early-stage startup that has recruited for at least its first engineer.
Product & market
Pricing
Free/open-source core with subscription-based hosted service and enterprise support; terms mention monthly/annual billing and a free-trial flow.
Differentiators
- —Open-source and self-hostable
- —Local notebook and playground workflow
- —Continuous LLM regression testing and observability
- —Supports prompts, models, and vector databases
- —Uses structured-output validation, semantic similarity, and human feedback
- —Designed for developer experimentation as well as production monitoring
Technology
Python
GitHub
Streamlit
OpenAI
Anthropic
LLaMA
Chroma
Weaviate
LanceDB
Vercel
Google Analytics
Mixpanel
Sentry
Segment
PostHog
Stripe
Customers
software engineers building LLM applications
startup founders
AI/ML researchers
teams using vector databases
enterprise users seeking prompt/model evaluation and observability
Competitors
Braintrust
PromptLayer
Humanloop
Helicone
Keywords AI
BenchLLM
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
about USD 1M
Signals & risks
Latest news
PR Newswire · Jan 2024
Funding announcement stating Hegel AI was founded in 2023 by Steve Krawczyk and Kevin Tse and that PromptTools is its first platform launch.
LinkedIn · Jan 2024
Hegel AI announced observability/monitoring features for PromptTools, indicating ongoing product development.
Hacker News · Aug 2023
Community launch thread for PromptTools with product details on LLM/vector-database evaluation, local experimentation, and continuous testing.
Y Combinator · Jul 2023
YC launch post describing Hegel AI’s PromptTools product, its LLM evaluation use cases, and the founding team.
Jobs and careers at Hegel AI
0 jobs at Hegel AI
No open positions
Check back later for new openings