As their summer in San Francisco comes to a close, the members of the Yale Hacker House announced today that they’ve collectively raised $17 million in pre-seed and seed-round funding for their various startups.
Not a bad summer break for a group of bright, babyfaced undergrads scarcely old enough to drink.
“I’m super thrilled by the outcome. It far exceeded a lot of the expectations we had,” said Nicolas Gertler, 21, co-founder of Density, an AI legal services startup, and a rising senior at Yale.
Gertler co-founded the house earlier this year with his classmates Leïa Ryan and Oliver Hime, both 20-year-old presidents of the Yale Entrepreneurial Society.
After spring semester ended in May, they and their fellow student entrepreneurs arrived at their new home in Nob Hill, two charming apartments stacked on top of each other on Pine Street. The rent was fully covered by the house’s sponsors, venture capital firms Caffeinated Capital, Long Journey Ventures, and HSBC Innovation Banking, along with law firm Ashurst Perkins Coie. Throughout their two-month stay, the students were free to go all-in on their companies, which span AI, robotics, aerospace, healthtech, and other hot sectors.
The exact number of Yalies living in the house fluctuated throughout the summer, Gertler said, but averaged at around 15. (Ryan, for one, opted to live with her boyfriend, who works in the tech industry and was already set up in San Francisco.)
Seven startups operated in the house. Four of them make up the $17 million haul, which includes funding from Caffeinated Capital, Abstract, and “other firms and angel investors,” Gertler said.
One of those four is Nade, an AI space tech startup founded by James Masson. Masson said Nade “soft-closed” a $3.2 million funding round last week, which largely came from VCs he met through his friends in the hacker house. (That same week, he also turned 20.)
When Masson arrived in California, he was still a math major going into his junior year, excited to work on a new problem but with no major business plans.
“I didn’t even plan on raising,” Masson said of when he first moved into the house. “But then, you know, one firm bites and the whole thing goes haywire.” Three weeks ago, he officially dropped out of Yale.
The wider Yale Hacker House network also includes recent alums like Srikar Godilla, who graduated in 2024, and Jimmy Carter, who graduated in May. They co-founded Daemo AI, a B2B software company that this month raised just under $1.2 million.
Godilla and Carter did not live in the hacker house this summer, but Carter considers himself to be a part of its ecosystem. He is even tinkering with a new app to connect Yalies in the scene, which he’s calling “Yinder.”
“It feels like we’re starting to build a real Yale founder community here in SF,” said Ryan, the hacker house co-founder, over text. “Hopefully it will only continue to grow.” She and recent Yale graduate Riya Bhargava co-founded Cortex, an AI operating system for biology labs. Over the summer they raised $1.1 million. Ryan will remain in San Francisco, having taken an indefinite leave of absence from Yale.
Founders of the fourth startup, which contributed the bulk of the $17 million figure, declined to be named because they said they are still in stealth, industry parlance for not yet publicly launched.
Masson estimated the collective valuation of the hacker house companies is over $200 million.
The hacker house officially closes its first season this Saturday, Aug. 1. On Friday, they’ll host a “finale” party in the backyard. “The plan is to bring Mediterranean food, seltzers, you know, Celsius and Monsters,” Gertler said.
Gertler is still finalizing the logistics, but said, “We are certainly running the house again next year.”
