Orca is a San Francisco startup (Y Combinator S24) that lets anyone build, host, and play Minecraft games without writing code. You describe a mod, plugin, or world in plain English and Orca's AI writes the code, generates textures, compiles a real mod, tests it, and can deploy it live to a free 8 GB server in seconds. The company frames its ambition as building a Roblox-style creator platform on top of Minecraft's 300M+ player base, playable from a browser or a free desktop client.
QC Ware is a Palo Alto-based enterprise software company that builds quantum and quantum-inspired tools for hard scientific problems. Founded in 2014 by veterans of NASA Ames, it started as a hardware-agnostic quantum cloud platform (Forge) and evolved into Promethium, a GPU-accelerated quantum chemistry SaaS that runs density functional theory calculations on molecules up to thousands of atoms, claiming speeds 10 to 100 times faster than legacy tools. The company also runs Q2B, the largest annual practical quantum computing conference, and counts Goldman Sachs, Airbus, BMW and Covestro among its collaborators and investors.
Kun Gao is a serial entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and original CEO of Crunchyroll, the platform that turned anime from a niche US curiosity into a billion-dollar streaming giant (acquired by Sony/AT&T WarnerMedia for $1.2 billion). Now he's doing it again as Co-Founder and CEO of Forge (forge.gg), a San Francisco-based game marketing and loyalty platform that hit 1 million users within its first year. Alongside co-founders Dennis 'Thresh' Fong (the world's first professional esports player) and George Ng, Gao is building the infrastructure layer that indie game developers desperately need: no-code loyalty programs, player analytics, and direct community channels - without the walled gardens.