Ishaan Gangwani

Ishaan Gangwani is the 17-year-old co-founder of InkVell, an AI-native operating system for scientific research. Accepted into Y Combinator’s W26 batch, he chose to skip university to build a platform that automates the scientific research lifecycle—from literature reviews to drafting papers. Before InkVell, Ishaan was a developer and AI researcher with acceptances at NeurIPS and ICML workshops. Based in San Francisco, he is one of the youngest founders ever backed by YC, having raised a $1.4M pre-seed round from a16z scout fund and Pioneer Fund.

InkVell is a full-stack platform that modernizes the research lifecycle by replacing tools like LaTeX with an AI-integrated environment. It allows scientists to draft papers, run experiments, and manage citations using specialized AI agents. Backed by YC W26 and a16z Scout Fund, it aims to be the primary interface for global R&D labs and academic institutions.