# Abhay Agarwal

> Abhay Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Poly, the intelligent cloud file browser built to replace Finder and File Explorer for the AI era. A former Microsoft Research AI fellow and Stanford d.school lecturer, he came up through engineering at UC Berkeley and design at Stanford, then founded the human-centered AI consultancy Polytopal before pivoting it into a Y Combinator-backed startup. In November 2025, Poly emerged from stealth with $8M in seed funding led by Felicis, powered by its own Polyembed-v1 embedding model. Agarwal describes the product as 'an LLM with infinite context from your life,' and frames his life's work around a theory he calls Post-Cognitive Design.

- **Role:** Founder & CEO at Poly
- **Organizations:** Poly, Polytopal, Microsoft Research, Stanford d.school, UT Austin School of Design and Creative Technology, Y Combinator
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, MS, Product Design, Stanford University (d.school)
- **Known for:** Founder & CEO of Poly, which raised $8M in seed funding (Nov 2025) led by Felicis, Built proprietary embedding model Polyembed-v1 supporting text, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets, audio, video, code and URLs, Selected for a Microsoft Research fellowship in AI for social impact

## Career timeline

- **2012** — Earns BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley
- **2012-2019** — Research roles at UC Berkeley and UT Austin; Microsoft Research fellowship focused on AI for social impact, including computer-vision hardware tools for the visually impaired
- **2019** — Completes MS in Product Design at Stanford's d.school
- **2020** — Founds Polytopal, a human-centered AI consultancy working with Spotify, Meta and Nestle
- **2021** — Teaches design language for ML products at Stanford d.school and Intro to AI at UT Austin; develops the 'Post-Cognitive Design' theory
- **2022** — Co-founds Poly (with Sam Young); joins Y Combinator Summer 2022 batch building AI-generated art assets
- **2023** — Raises seed capital; NextView publishes 'Why NextView Invested in Poly'
- **2025-11** — Poly emerges from stealth as an intelligent cloud file browser with $8M seed led by Felicis and its own Polyembed-v1 model

## Achievements

- Founder & CEO of Poly, which raised $8M in seed funding (Nov 2025) led by Felicis
- Built proprietary embedding model Polyembed-v1 supporting text, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets, audio, video, code and URLs
- Selected for a Microsoft Research fellowship in AI for social impact
- Founded Polytopal, advising Spotify, Meta and Nestle on intelligent systems
- Lecturer at Stanford's d.school and instructor of Intro to AI at UT Austin
- Y Combinator Summer 2022 alum

## Latest updates

- **2025-11** — Poly emerged from stealth with $8M seed funding led by Felicis (with Bloomberg Beta, NextView, Figma Ventures, AI Grant, Wing Ventures, MVP Ventures), launching a macOS file browser powered by Polyembed-v1.

## Links

- Website: https://poly.app
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhaykagarwal/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/denizen_kane

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/abhay-agarwal
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-25