# Akash Sharma

> Akash Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Vellum, a New York-based enterprise AI development platform that helps teams build, evaluate, and ship production-grade LLM applications. A UC Berkeley graduate who spent five years at McKinsey's Silicon Valley office, he started Vellum in 2023 with two MIT engineers he met at the startup Dover. The company went through Y Combinator (W23), raised $25M+ to date including a $20M Series A in July 2025, and works with 150+ companies from Redfin and Drata to Cursor and Headspace. Sharma is known for talking to thousands of teams running LLMs in production and openly sharing what he learns.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Vellum
- **Organizations:** Vellum, McKinsey & Company, Dover
- **Education:** B.S., Industrial Engineering and Operations Research / Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Vellum, an enterprise AI development platform used by 150+ companies, Raised $25M+ total funding including a $20M Series A in July 2025, Graduated Y Combinator (Winter 2023)

## Career timeline

- **pre-2023** — Earned undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley (Industrial Engineering & Operations Research)
- **pre-2023** — Spent ~5 years at McKinsey & Company's Silicon Valley office
- **2021-2022** — Worked at Dover (YC S19) alongside future co-founders Sidd Seethepalli and Noa Flaherty, building production LLM use cases
- **2023** — Co-founded Vellum; went through Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch
- **2023** — Raised ~$5M seed shortly after launch
- **2025** — Led Vellum's $20M Series A (announced July 10, 2025), led by Leaders Fund

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Vellum, an enterprise AI development platform used by 150+ companies
- Raised $25M+ total funding including a $20M Series A in July 2025
- Graduated Y Combinator (Winter 2023)
- Conducted conversations with over 1,500 teams running LLMs in production to shape the product
- Built a customer base spanning Redfin, Drata, Swisscom, DeepScribe, Cursor, Lovable, Salesforce and Headspace

## Latest updates

- **2025-07** — Vellum announced a $20M Series A led by Leaders Fund, with Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, Socii Capital and Eastlink Capital participating.
- **2025** — Vellum launched 'Vellum for Agents,' letting ops teams automate tasks by describing what they want done in plain language.

## Links

- Website: https://www.vellum.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/akash-sharma53
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/akashsharma503

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/akash-sharma
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-20