A two-person, Y Combinator-backed startup replaced the JDK, the Gradle build, and the dead tutorials with a text box. You describe a mod - Orca's AI writes it, textures it, compiles it, and drops it onto a free server.
There is a specific wall that has stopped a generation of kids from making their own Minecraft mods. It is not imagination. It is the Java Development Kit, a Gradle build script, and a modding tutorial written in 2016 that no longer compiles. Somewhere between "I want a dragon that drops diamonds" and a mod that actually runs, most people quit. Orca, a San Francisco company from Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch, is built entirely around removing that wall.
The pitch is short enough to fit in a text box, which is roughly the point. You type what you want in plain English. Orca's AI writes the code, generates the textures, compiles a real mod, and tests it - then, if you want, deploys it live to a server it also hosts for free. No download is required to start. The company runs on two people: Ege Kaan Duman, the CEO, and Ali Kavoosi, the CTO.
Most AI coding tools stop at the code. They hand you a block of Java and wish you luck. Orca's more interesting decision is to keep going past that point - to the moment the mod actually runs in the game. Its agent closes the full loop: write, texture, compile, reload Minecraft, test. That last step is what turns a demo into something a nine-year-old can trust.
Type the mob, item, block, or feature you want in plain English.
The AI writes the code and creates matching textures.
It builds a real mod for Fabric, Forge, NeoForge or Bedrock.
Reloads Minecraft to test, then deploys live to your server.
The surface area is broad for a two-person shop. There is the AI mod maker for Java editions, a plugin generator for Paper and Spigot servers, a Bedrock addon creator, an AI resource-pack maker for textures, and datapack and custom-mob generators. For the more technical, there is a Minecraft CLI and an MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration. The free desktop app, for Windows, macOS on Apple Silicon, and Linux, launches the game with your creations in one click.
Roblox turned teenagers into game developers and a handful of them into millionaires, but it had to build its own world and drag players into it. Orca's framing skips that cost. "Think Roblox," the company says, "but built on top of Minecraft's 312M player base." The audience is already there, already modding, already trading worlds on Discord. Orca is betting the missing piece was never the players - it was tooling good enough that anyone could create.
That base is the reason the math is interesting. If even a sliver of Minecraft's players want to build rather than just play, the creator layer underneath them is worth owning. The launcher side of Orca leans into this directly: a place where players browse and join custom Minecraft experiences with one click, and where the company handles hosting and mod delivery so creators can focus on the games - and, in time, monetize them.
Minecraft already has a modding economy. CurseForge and Modrinth distribute mods. Aternos and Apex host servers. MCreator gives you a visual, no-code mod builder. What none of them do is collapse the whole chain - idea, code, textures, compile, host, play - into one flow that starts with a sentence. The Minecraft ecosystem is also a maze of incompatible formats: Fabric, Forge, NeoForge, Bedrock, Paper, Spigot. Absorbing that fragmented, tribal knowledge and hiding it behind a prompt is exactly the kind of task large language models are unusually good at.
| Capability | Orca | Traditional stack |
|---|---|---|
| Make a mod from plain English | Yes | No |
| Auto-generate textures | Yes | Manual |
| Compile + test for you | Yes | You do it |
| Free server included | 8 GB | Separate host |
| One tool across mod formats | Yes | Format-specific |
The free 8 GB server deserves its own line. In a market where "free Minecraft server" usually means ad-riddled, laggy, and capped, giving every account real hosting that spins up in about 30 seconds is a wedge, not a giveaway. Hand people the expensive part for free and they tend to build their world on top of you.
The founding pair is not the combination a spreadsheet would generate. Ege Kaan Duman is a Rhodes Scholar from Turkey and an alumnus of Duke, Duke Kunshan, and Oxford, who lists musician, poet, and cook among his descriptors and previously co-founded Simplifine, an AI research workspace. Ali Kavoosi comes from the other end of the stack: an engineer whose prior work ranged from putting AI models onto deep brain stimulators to speeding up training and inference on GPUs. Story and systems, sitting at the same table.
The business runs on the familiar freemium-with-credits shape. The free tier hands you 250 lifetime credits, the 8 GB server, and no credit-card requirement. Orca Pro is a subscription with recurring weekly credits - around 12,500 - for people building steadily. The longer arc is the creator economy the launcher hints at: hosting and mod delivery for creators who can eventually charge for the games they make, with Orca owning the rails underneath.
Go-to-market has been public and fast. Orca has launched multiple times on Product Hunt - an AI agent for game development in late 2025, browser-based play in early 2026 - and works with Minecraft YouTubers to reach the exact audience most likely to build. For a company of two, shipping in public is both the marketing and the roadmap.