# Instance

> Instance is a San Francisco startup building the autonomous evaluation rig for robot learning. Its first product is a success detector that watches a robot's rollout video, reads the task description, and returns a verdict on whether the task was completed - with a subtask-by-subtask breakdown. Founded in 2026 by MIT classmates and childhood friends Claire Mao and Lucy Cai, Instance is part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch and aims to remove humans from the tedious loop of watching robots, grading them, and resetting the scene.

- **Founded:** 2026
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, United States
- **Founders:** Claire Mao (Cofounder & CEO), Lucy Cai (Cofounder & CTO)
- **Team size:** 2-4
- **Products:** Success Detector, Verification Console, Live Demo / Rollout Capture
- **Notable:** Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch, Success detector outperformed frontier vision-language models on both accuracy and latency across 10,000+ human-labeled episodes, Validated across 8 benchmarks and 7 robot platforms

## Products & services

- **Success Detector** — Takes a task description and robot camera footage and returns a success verdict with a detailed subtask-by-subtask breakdown. Tested on 10,000+ human-labeled episodes across 8 benchmarks and 7 robot platforms, outperforming frontier vision-language models on both accuracy and latency. Works across any robot and camera angle.
- **Verification Console** — A web console where teams submit robot episodes with task specifications and receive trusted success verdicts backed by evidence, producing verified training data.
- **Live Demo / Rollout Capture** — A public demo at demo.instancelabs.ai where anyone can drop in a robot video - or record one from their phone - and watch it get verified live.

## Achievements

- Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch
- Success detector outperformed frontier vision-language models on both accuracy and latency across 10,000+ human-labeled episodes
- Validated across 8 benchmarks and 7 robot platforms
- Shipped a public live demo where anyone can verify a robot video from their phone

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Launched publicly as part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch with a success detector for robot policies.
- **2026-03** — Featured among promising startups in coverage of Y Combinator's latest batch.

## Links

- Website: https://instancelabs.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/instancelabs
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/tryinstance

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/instance-yc-s26
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-31