The controversy surrounding compliance startup Delve has gone from unhealthy to worse this week. Among the fresh allegations from the nameless whistleblower generally known as DeepDelver is the claim that Delve allegedly took an open supply instrument and handed it off as its personal work with out correct license attribution to or financial settlement with the unique developer.
The story goes that the Delve crew pitched a no-code instrument it known as Pathways to a prospect. That prospect would later develop into the whistleblower DeepDelver. DeepDelver acknowledged that Pathways appeared so much like Sim.ai’s open supply agent-building product known as SimStudio and requested Delve if it was based mostly on SimStudio. The Delve people mentioned they constructed it themselves, the whistleblower contends.
DeepDelver then offered alleged proof that this instrument was really a fork — a modified copy — of SimStudio, modified simply sufficient to be handed off as Delve’s personal. If that proves true, it will be a violation of the Apache software program license, which requires the unique developer be credited.
DeepDelver calls this “stealing intellectual property,” which is a bit of a stretch, since open supply instruments are freely obtainable for use, if they’re correctly credited. But the irony is difficult to overlook: Delve, a startup that purports to promote a compliance answer, could have violated a software program license.
Sim.ai’s founder and CEO, Emir Karabeg, confirmed to TechCrunch that he answered DeepDelver’s questions in regards to the allegations. He instructed the whistleblower that Delve had no license settlement with Sim.ai in any way.
“We knew they planned to use Sim for something and later tried unsuccessfully to sell them an agreement,” Karabeg instructed DeepDelver. “I didn’t realize they were going to sell it out of the box as a stand-alone solution.”
Adding to the awkwardness: Sim.ai was really a Delve buyer, Karabeg instructed TechCrunch. Both startups have been grads of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Y Combinator alumni incessantly purchase one another’s merchandise. So whereas Sim.ai paid Delve, Delve didn’t do the identical for Sim.ai.
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Karabeg had even expressed sympathy for Delve after the whistleblower dropped the primary bombshell final week. DeepDelver initially alleged that Delve was faking buyer knowledge and utilizing rubber-stamping auditors, allegations that Delve has denied.
Since studying of the Sim.ai allegations, Karabeg has not heard from Delve’s founders. “I was consoling my friends at Delve after the first post was released last week, but since I found out about this news we haven’t been in contact,” he instructed TechCrunch.
Delve’s alleged strategies preceded its Series A funding spherical led by Insight Partners, the whistleblower additionally alleges. We’ve reached out to Insight Partners to ask about this, and in regards to the venerable VC agency’s due-diligence course of.
We know that Insight Partners’ 2025 weblog put up about why it led a $32 million investment into Delve was, for a short while, unavailable on the VC agency’s web site. The agency’s LinkedIn post in regards to the funding has not been restored, at the least at the moment.
Mentions of the Pathways instrument on Delve’s web site, together with many different pages, additionally appear to have been scrubbed. Delve didn’t reply to a request for remark, and the media inquiries handle on its web site not works.
The allegations that Delve could have violated an open supply license of a buyer and, apparently, a pal generated a lot outcry on X that it has develop into a trending matter, full with a scathing community note.
