ernd (YC F26) — The credit card for companies that pay for AI
ernd is the card for companies that pay for AI, offering up to 6% back on AI spend and 2% on everything else. We pool startups’ purchasing power to negotiate discounts, higher usage limits and priority support from AI providers.
ernd is a Y Combinator company in the Fall 2026 batch. Its directory entry describes it as: The credit card for companies that pay for AI. The founders listed are Connor Dawson (Founder/CEO), Nikhil Ruia (Founder/CTO), Malcolm Wengel (Founder) (Y Combinator directory entry, October 29, 2026).
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Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “Target eliminated approximately 1,800 corporate positions, with around 1,000 employees receiving layoff notices and the remainder accounted for by eliminating open roles.” Source: NBC News
ernd is the card for companies that pay for AI, offering up to 6% back on AI spend and 2% on everything else. We pool startups’ purchasing power to negotiate discounts, higher usage limits and priority support from AI providers. In our first 48hrs, we onboarded 10 startups and landed 5 vendor partnerships.
We combine experience in quant finance at Bridgewater and IMC, payments at Ripple, financial AI at Farsight, and founding an investment fund focused on distressed industrial acquisitions.
Checked away from the directory entry. What is below does not come from the company's Y Combinator page.
The ernd card for companies that pay for AI | ernd
The ernd card is a charge card for US companies that pay for AI. We're issuing cards on a first-come, first-served basis.
The title and description the site itself served, answering 200. Not a cached copy and not the company's directory entry — what was live when we asked.
Connor Dawson
Founder/CEO
CEO of ernd. At Bridgewater’s AIA Labs, built a profitable forecasting system run by AI agents. Won 3 trading competitions, including UChicago. In high school, built a business monetizing Instagram theme pages, including dog pages and baseball highlights and brought it to over $50K in revenue. On leave from Penn, where he studied computer science and math.
Nikhil Ruia
Founder/CTO
Nikhil is the co-founder and CTO at ernd. Previously, he worked as a software engineer for IMC Trading improving data infrastructure, was the first intern on the stablecoin team at Ripple securing payments on RLUSD, and improved RLHF methods through research at the Wharton school. In high school, Nikhil developed many mobile and VR games, garnering over 15,000 downloads. He was a CS student at UPenn before dropping out.
Malcolm Wengel
Founder
COO of ernd. Previously founded an investment fund focused on distressed industrial acquisitions and worked at a Series A fintech startup building AI agents for finance. Co-founded ARCodeKids, a nonprofit that raised nearly $600K, including $100K from Microsoft Philanthropies, to scale computer science enrollment in Arkansas. On leave from Penn, where I studied finance and AI.
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
No investor is drawn from a Form D — the form states how many invested and never who. The one investor on this graph is named because a batch has exactly one.
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Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “Target eliminated approximately 1,800 corporate positions, with around 1,000 employees receiving layoff notices and the remainder accounted for by eliminating open roles.” Source: NBC News
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What the Full Report on ernd covers
The Short Answer
Which Company This Is
What They Do, And How The Money Works
Who Runs It, And How To Reach Them
The Money: Funding, Valuation, Runway
Who Pays Them, And Who They Are Up Against
Warning Bells
Sources
7 cited sources found
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