# Aakash Mahalingam

> Aakash Mahalingam is the cofounder and CEO of Canary (YC W26), a startup building an AI QA engineer that reads your source code to catch broken user flows before they hit production. Before Canary he built Windsurf's enterprise product and helped push its self-serve plan to roughly $20M ARR in six months. An ICPC APAC finalist with earlier stints at AWS and Morgan Stanley, he now works out of Mountain View on the problem of testing keeping pace with AI-accelerated coding.

- **Role:** Cofounder and CEO at Canary (YC W26)
- **Organizations:** Canary (Canaries, Inc.), Windsurf, Amazon Web Services, Morgan Stanley, Northeastern University
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** MS, Computer Science, Northeastern University
- **Known for:** Cofounder and CEO of Canary, accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch, Helped grow Windsurf's enterprise self-serve plan to approximately $20M ARR in six months, ICPC APAC regional finalist

## Career timeline

- **pre-2025** — Software engineering roles at Amazon Web Services and Morgan Stanley; ICPC APAC finalist
- **2025** — Software Engineer at Windsurf, building the enterprise product and Applied AI tooling for large enterprises
- **2025** — Helped launch Windsurf's enterprise self-serve plan, reaching roughly $20M ARR in six months
- **2026** — Cofounded Canary (YC W26) with Viswesh N G; serves as Cofounder and CEO

## Achievements

- Cofounder and CEO of Canary, accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch
- Helped grow Windsurf's enterprise self-serve plan to approximately $20M ARR in six months
- ICPC APAC regional finalist
- Built Applied AI tooling around foundation models for enterprise customers at Windsurf

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Cofounded Canary and joined Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch as Cofounder and CEO.
- **2026-01** — Canary launched publicly on Hacker News as an AI QA agent that reads pull requests, generates tests, and comments results on the PR.

## Links

- Website: https://www.runcanary.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aakashmahalingam/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/Aakash_Mahali

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/aakash-mahalingam
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-03