Masterpiece

<!-- hacklab:yc-profile -- YC company profile Working capital for data companies training frontier AI We believe AI will be one of humanity’s next great masterpieces. Building i…

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About Masterpiece

YC company profile

Working capital for data companies training frontier AI

We believe AI will be one of humanity’s next great masterpieces. Building it will require financial infrastructure as ambitious as the companies creating it. We're founders backed by Y Combinator building the financial rails underpinning the AI data economy.

Masterpiece provides short term working capital to data vendors that sell training data, evaluation work, and reinforcement learning environments to frontier AI labs.

A major financing gap exists in this market. Data vendors often need to pay contributors and fund operations before a lab has completed QA, accepted the work, and paid the invoice. This creates a 30 to 90 day cash gap between when vendors incur costs and when they receive payment. Legacy invoice lenders have little visibility into how to underwrite these assets.

Masterpiece closes that gap by advancing capital against high quality lab contracts and invoices. Vendors can use the capital to scale delivery, pay contributors, and fund growth, then repay masterpiece when the lab payment arrives.

YC batch: Spring 2026
Founded: 2026
Team size: 3
Location: New York City, NY
Country: US
Status: Active
Industry: Fintech
Stage: Early
Tags: Crypto / Web3, Lending, AI
YC partner: Harj Taggar

Founders

Benjamin Nguyen — Founder/CEO

Co-founder, CEO at Masterpiece (YC P26).

LinkedIn · X

Vivek Yanamadula — Founder/CTO

Co-founder, CTO @ Masterpiece | Ex-AWS, B.A./M.S. CS @ Columbia University