Keywords AI —The LLM engineering platform thousands of developers love.

Keywords AI envisions a future where building and deploying AI applications is streamlined and accessible for all startups. By creating a unified platform that integrates large language models, they aim to empower developers to innovate with AI confidently and efficiently.

At the core of Keywords AI's ambition is a robust observability platform, designed to provide deep insights into the performance and cost of LLM applications. This allows companies to optimize AI usage, reducing waste and scaling smartly, transforming how AI-driven products are built and maintained.

Driven by a mission to simplify AI development, Keywords AI leverages cutting-edge technology and a deep understanding of developer needs to build tools that not only solve today's challenges but also anticipate the future of intelligent applications.

We've been tracking Keywords AI since they emerged from Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, and honestly, their story caught our attention for all the right reasons. Here's a startup that began building an AI job search co-pilot, realized they were solving the wrong problem, and pivoted hard into LLM observability. That kind of self-awareness? It's refreshing.

What really impressed us is how quickly founders Andy Li and Raymond Huang recognized that every AI startup was struggling with the same headaches: monitoring LLM performance, managing costs, and actually understanding what their models were doing in production.

The "Datadog for LLMs" Approach

Keywords AI positions itself as monitoring infrastructure for large language models, and we think that's exactly what the market needed. Their unified API endpoint lets developers integrate LLM monitoring in minutes rather than weeks. We tested their OpenAI-style API calls, and the setup process lived up to the hype.

The platform handles the stuff that keeps AI developers up at night: prompt experimentation, user session visualization, and performance tracking. It's not groundbreaking technology, but it's solving a very real pain point that most teams were cobbling together with internal tools.

Traction That Actually Matters

Here's where Keywords AI gets interesting: they're already powering over 40 Y Combinator startups. That's significant social proof in a space where trust matters enormously. When fellow YC companies are betting their AI infrastructure on your platform, you're clearly doing something right.

The $500K in funding might seem modest, but for a infrastructure play targeting startups, it's actually smart positioning. They're not trying to be everything to everyone—they're laser-focused on making AI development less painful for teams like themselves.

Who Should Pay Attention

Keywords AI makes the most sense for AI startups and development teams who are tired of building monitoring infrastructure from scratch. If you're already using LLMs in production and struggling with visibility into performance and costs, this platform could save you months of internal development.

We're particularly bullish on their timing. As AI applications move from prototype to production, the need for proper observability tools is only going to grow. Keywords AI positioned themselves right at the center of that trend.