Defining the next generation of the agent infra stack
LLMs are changing how software is built, and the teams that ship AI in production need a whole new class of tooling.
Our story
Respan (formerly Keywords AI) started at the University of Illinois, where co-founders Andy and Raymond met as engineering students. They began by building an API to dynamically route LLM calls. Andy left school to lead the company full time, and the company later joined Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch. Hendrix joined afterward and became the third co-founder.
Early feedback made one thing clear: routing alone wasn't enough - developers needed visibility into how their agents behaved in production.
Respan was rebuilt around that insight. Today, it helps teams trace workflows, evaluate agent behavior, and continuously improve quality in production. Hundreds of startups and enterprise teams now use Respan to operate AI agents at scale.
Backed by incredible investors
Our backers include top venture firms and some of the most exceptional founders and operators building AI today.
Fabian Hedin->
CTO, Lovable
Zexia Zhang->
CTO, Retell AI
Todd Li->
President, Retell AI
Deshraj Yadav->
CTO, Mem0
Daniel Kivatinos->
Co-founder, DrChrono & JustPaid
William Zeng->
CEO, Sweep
Jude Rizzo->
Co-founder, Carousel
Daniel Wolf
Co-founder, Carousel
Dawson Chen->
CEO, Martin
Ethan Hou->
CTO, Martin
Shuangling Yin->
CTO, InspectMind AI
Pennie Li->
CTO, A1Base
Jinjing Liang->
CEO, Stably
Anand Chowdhary->
CTO, FirstQuadrant
Raymond Wang->
CEO, AeroVect
Karthik Narayanan->
Co-founder, inai
Ishaan Kolluri->
Product, Headway
Matthew Eggertson->
Angel Investor
Richard Deng->
Angel Investor
Steef Van Winkel->
Angel Investor
We care deeply about the quality of our work
We're a small team where every person has outsized impact. We ship weekly, talk to customers constantly, and live together in our company hacker house in Alameda.
We're hiring
We're a 10-person team building the next generation agent infra stack. We care about craft and move fast. 13 open roles.
