YC Summer 2026 (S26) founder

Elena Zhao

Founder of Litmus, Evals for humans

Company

Elena Zhao is listed as a founder of Litmus. Litmus is building the most accurate framework for evaluating and benchmarking human capability, starting with software. AI will compound small differences in human capability into increasingly large differences in what people can accomplish, while making existing static benchmarks obsolete. Software is already there: AI can hill-climb any output-based evaluation, while the ability to direct it is becoming the defining advantage. Litmus applies the same approach we already use for model evals to humans – creating world-like environments, and inspecting trajectory instead of just output. Every knowledge industry will soon face the same problem. We build Litmus to tell you what humans are capable of. We're already helping build frontier technical teams at Mercor, Composio, Neo Scholars, and more.

Founder traction evidence

Public posts and activity attributed directly to this founder.

  1. LinkedIn

    Elena Zhao announced Litmus is headed to Y Combinator

    Founder post says Elena Zhao and Shaivi Rau are building Litmus and headed to Y Combinator this summer.

  2. X

    now this is high signal https://t.co/vuS6Beb7dk

    now this is high signal https://t.co/vuS6Beb7dk

  3. X

    this is our engineering team btw https://t.co/9ooClR68y8

    this is our engineering team btw https://t.co/9ooClR68y8

  4. X

    spot the difference: - my cofounder - mannequin on south park

    spot the difference: - my cofounder - mannequin on south park

  5. X

    feeding sf startups one pastry box at a time @composio https://t.co/ydahihsePU

    feeding sf startups one pastry box at a time @composio https://t.co/ydahihsePU

  6. X

    grant me the serenity to accept the blockers i cannot change, the courage to face the sales cycles ahead, and the wisdom to savor the batch while it lasts

    grant me the serenity to accept the blockers i cannot change, the courage to face the sales cycles ahead, and the wisdom to savor the batch while it lasts

  7. X

    about time 🙌

    about time 🙌

  8. X

    tech slop bowls upgraded ‼️

    tech slop bowls upgraded ‼️