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.