Launch Archive / X · Jun 2026
Launch post for the AI Gateway, emphasizing built-in observability, evaluations, prompt optimization, and routing across 1,000+ models.
The AI gateway with built-in observability & evals
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
Respan (formerly Keywords AI) is a YC W24 startup building an LLM engineering platform for AI teams, combining gateway routing, observability, evaluations, and prompt management so teams can ship and monitor production AI agents.
Primary product
AI gateway, observability, and evaluation platform for LLM applications
Founded
2023
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
10-20
Work style
Flexible
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
AI infrastructure / LLM observability
Offices
San Francisco, CA, United States (HQ)
Alameda, CA, United States (hacker house / registered office)
Business model
B2B SaaS
freemium
subscription
usage-based
enterprise sales
Funding
People & investors
Leadership
CEO
Raymond Huang
CTO
Co-founder, Head of Sales
Head of DevRel
Head of Engineering
Work & culture
Small, intense team that ships weekly, talks to customers constantly, and often works from a shared hacker-house environment in Alameda; the company emphasizes craft, speed, and high ownership.
Work style
Flexible
Visa sponsorship
Limited
Compensation
Open roles have been publicly posted with cash compensation bands such as Product Engineer and Full-Stack SWE at $100K-$200K, Founding Technical GTM at $100K-$150K, SDR and Marketing up to $120K, SEO & Growth Content Lead up to $150K, plus meaningful equity.
Benefits
Cash salary
Meaningful equity
Remote flexibility for some roles
Relocation support
Visa support where possible
Product & market
Pricing
Freemium plus subscription: Free tier, Team tier at $199/month billed yearly, and custom Enterprise pricing; additional usage-based fees apply for logs/scores.
Differentiators
- —Unified gateway + observability + evaluations + prompt management in one platform
- —1,000+ model routing with automatic fallbacks
- —No token markup; provider discounts passed through to customers
- —Human review, code checks, and LLM judges in one evaluation workflow
- —OpenTelemetry-compatible tracing and production logging
- —Dedicated support and enterprise security/compliance options
Technology
OpenTelemetry
ClickHouse
PostgreSQL
OpenAI
Anthropic
LangChain
Vercel AI SDK
LlamaIndex
TypeScript
React
Docker
Kubernetes
Customers
100+ AI startups and enterprise teams
AlphaSense
Retell AI
Gumloop
Lovable
Finta
Mem0
Giga
Competitors
Langfuse
Helicone
Braintrust
Dify
Arize
New Relic
Grafana
Sumo Logic
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
$277K-$4.2M (third-party estimate)
Estimated monthly visits
57.9K
Traffic estimate as of May 2026
Latest news
Pulse 2.0 · May 2026
Founder interview covering the company's origin story at UIUC, the pivot from routing to observability, the hacker-house operating style, and growth to more than 100 customers.
Respan · May 2026
Product launch page for the AI Gateway, describing routing across 500+ models, failover, caching, spend controls, and logging for production LLM traffic.
Yahoo Finance / GlobeNewswire · Mar 2026
Funding announcement for the $5M seed round led by Gradient, with participation from Y Combinator, Hat-Trick Capital, XIAOXIAO FUND, Antigravity Capital, and Alpen Capital; the release also highlights Respan's product positioning, customer traction, and revenue growth.
Respan · Feb 2026
The company publicly rebranded from Keywords AI to Respan and described its shift toward proactive LLM observability and evaluation for AI agents.
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