The compliance startup Delve has apparently lost its relationship with accelerator Y Combinator amid controversy. Delve is absent from YC’s portfolio directory, and its page on YC’s website has been removed. Delve’s COO, Selin Kocalar, shared on X that the two have “parted ways.”
Kocalar reminisced about the day of their YC interview at MIT, expressing gratitude to the community and the founder friends they made. Delve’s distancing from investors isn’t new, with Insight Partners also deleting posts about its investment, although one was restored later.
Delve is contesting anonymous allegations of misleading clients about compliance with privacy and security regulations, allegedly skipping key requirements and auto-generating approval reports. These claims first appeared in an anonymous Substack post by “DeepDelver,” who described themselves as a former client suspicious after receiving leaked data.
DeepDelver’s subsequent posts included claims of Slack and video posts from Delve, accusations of using an open source tool without proper credit, and reports from a security researcher accessing sensitive Delve data.
Delve was also linked to another controversy when malware was found in an open-source project by its customer, LiteLLM. In response, Delve’s latest blog post from COO Kocalar and CEO Karun Kaushik aims to “set the record straight.” They allege the company was subjected to a malicious attack, with data exfiltrated under false pretenses to smear Delve.
They counter DeepDelver’s accusations as a mix of false claims and out-of-context data, asserting their AI’s capacity despite criticism. On using open-source tools, they stated that they rebuilt it for compliance uses upon an Apache 2.0 repository.
Efforts to restore customer confidence include auditing partner firms, offering re-audits, penetration tests, and clarifying the use of Delve’s templates as starting points. On X, Kaushik apologized for inconveniences, admitting they grew too fast. TechCrunch has contacted Y Combinator and DeepDelver for their responses to Delve’s statements.