YC is a Fork of VSCode [Video]

Y Combinator prides itself in birthing several open-source startups, or more specifically now, open-source AI editors. But a recent mishap begs the question of whether funding ‘forks’ or clones is a winning strategy for the San Francisco-based accelerator and the VC ecosystem at large, after all. 

President Garry Tan has always believed in ensuring equity at the AI level. His work at Y Combinator (YC) involves, to a large extent, fostering open-source models and startups that will eventually help in reaching this said equity, without the hegemony of one big legacy company at the top. 

YC Drama Unfolds 

Recently, a controversy ensued between two YC-backed startups—Pear AI and Continue AI— both AI editors, where Pear AI was targeted for cloning the latter’s technology. The founders of Pear AI announced their startup on an X thread, which immediately received backlash. This is particularly so when the Pear AI founders turned their project (cloned from Continue AI and VSCode) into a proprietary, …