# Yoeven Khemlani

> Yoeven Khemlani is the CEO and co-founder of Interfaze, a Y Combinator-backed AI company building a purpose-built model for deterministic developer tasks like OCR, web scraping, classification and speech-to-text. A second-time founder, he previously built JigsawStack, a suite of small, custom AI models for backend engineering, and before that was CTO and co-founder of the Southeast Asian prop-tech startup Stayr/Staytion, which he scaled and exited. A former game developer and edge computer-vision researcher, he moved from Singapore to the San Francisco Bay Area to build AI infrastructure that prizes reliability over raw intelligence.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-Founder at Interfaze
- **Organizations:** Interfaze, JigsawStack, Stayr, Staytion, Y Combinator, Antler, Ada Ventures
- **Nationality:** Singaporean
- **Known for:** Second-time founder with a prior startup exit (Stayr/Staytion), Founder and CEO of Interfaze, a Y Combinator (Spring 2026) company, Built JigsawStack, raising about $1.5M in pre-seed funding from Antler and Ada Ventures

## Career timeline

- **2020** — Co-founded Stayr / led technology and product at Staytion, a Southeast Asian prop-tech and travel startup
- **2022** — Exited Stayr/Staytion after scaling across Southeast Asia; the startup reportedly reached $1M ARR in year one and $3M ARR in year two
- **2023** — Founded JigsawStack, a unified API suite of small custom AI models for backend developer tasks
- **2024** — Grew JigsawStack; raised roughly $1.5M pre-seed from investors including Antler and Ada Ventures
- **2025** — Founded Interfaze; appeared on Software Engineering Daily to discuss small AI models; relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area
- **2026** — Interfaze joined Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch

## Achievements

- Second-time founder with a prior startup exit (Stayr/Staytion)
- Founder and CEO of Interfaze, a Y Combinator (Spring 2026) company
- Built JigsawStack, raising about $1.5M in pre-seed funding from Antler and Ada Ventures
- Engineered a hybrid Mixture-of-Architecture model combining specialized DNN/CNN vision models with transformers
- Reportedly outperformed Gemini Flash, Claude Sonnet and GPT-4 mini on deterministic developer tasks
- Author of the open-source ai-video-search-engine project (600+ GitHub stars)
- Guest on Software Engineering Daily and The Flow AI Podcast
- Arctic Code Vault Contributor on GitHub

## Latest updates

- **2026** — Interfaze joined Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch and operates out of the San Francisco Bay Area with a team of about five.
- **2025** — Founded Interfaze and moved from Singapore to the San Francisco Bay Area to be closer to U.S. customers.
- **2025-07** — Appeared on Software Engineering Daily to discuss the case for small, specialized AI models.

## Links

- Website: https://yoeven.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoeven/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/yoeven
- GitHub: https://github.com/yoeven

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/yoeven-khemlani
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-31