Delve Startup Scandal: Did a Compliance Company Steal Open Source Code?
A startup that sells compliance software is now at the center of a growing controversy involving alleged open source license violations — the kind of violation it is supposed to help other companies avoid. If you are following the Delve scandal, things just got significantly worse, and the tech world is paying close attention.
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| Credit: Delve |
The Compliance Startup That May Have Broken Compliance Rules
Delve, a Y Combinator-backed compliance startup, is facing a second wave of explosive allegations from an anonymous whistleblower who goes by the name DeepDelver. This time, the claim is not just about questionable business practices — it is about allegedly taking an open source tool, stripping away its origins, and selling it as original, proprietary software.
The tool in question is called Pathways. Delve reportedly pitched it to a prospect as a no-code AI agent builder it had built in-house. That prospect would later become DeepDelver, the same person now blowing the whistle on the startup. And what DeepDelver says they found when they looked closely was not original work — it was something they had seen before.
Recognizing the Code Behind the Curtain
DeepDelver recognized that Pathways bore a striking resemblance to SimStudio, an open source agent-building product created by Sim.ai. When they directly asked Delve whether Pathways was based on SimStudio, the Delve team denied it, insisting they had built the tool themselves from scratch.
That denial is at the heart of the newest controversy. DeepDelver later presented evidence suggesting that Pathways was a fork of SimStudio — a modified copy — altered just enough to obscure its origins. If the evidence holds up, this would represent a direct violation of the Apache software license under which SimStudio was released. That license has one core requirement: give credit to the original developer. Delve allegedly never did.
The biting irony here is impossible to ignore. A company selling compliance solutions to other businesses may have failed to comply with one of the most basic and widely known rules in software development.
What Sim.ai's Founder Actually Said
Emir Karabeg, the founder and CEO of Sim.ai, confirmed to journalists that DeepDelver had reached out to him with questions about the allegations, and he answered them honestly. His response was blunt: Delve had no license agreement with Sim.ai at any point.
Karabeg explained that he had been aware Delve was exploring the use of Sim.ai's technology in some capacity, and that attempts had been made to sell them a proper agreement — but those attempts failed. He said he never imagined Delve would go on to package and sell the technology as a standalone product of their own.
What makes the situation even more uncomfortable is the relationship between the two companies. Sim.ai was actually a paying customer of Delve. Both were graduates of Y Combinator, and within that ecosystem, alumni companies frequently support each other by buying one another's products. That means Sim.ai paid Delve for its services — while Delve, according to Karabeg, never returned that courtesy for using Sim.ai's technology.
A Friendship That Has Gone Quiet
Before these new allegations surfaced, Karabeg had publicly expressed sympathy for the Delve team after the initial wave of whistleblower claims. The first post from DeepDelver alleged that Delve had been fabricating customer data and using accommodating auditors to rubber-stamp compliance certifications — serious accusations that Delve denied.
Karabeg had reportedly been consoling Delve's founders during the fallout from that first post. But ever since learning that his own company's open source work may have been appropriated without credit or compensation, the communication has stopped entirely. The founders of Delve have not reached out to him, and Karabeg has not heard from them since the Sim.ai allegations came to light.
It is a striking shift. What was a collegial startup friendship has now fallen completely silent.
The Money Trail and the Missing Web Pages
The timing of these alleged violations matters. DeepDelver claims the conduct around Pathways preceded Delve's Series A funding round, which was led by the prominent venture capital firm Insight Partners. That round raised 32 million dollars for Delve, and at the time, Insight Partners published a blog post explaining why they made the investment. That blog post was later found to be unavailable on the firm's website. A corresponding LinkedIn post from the firm has also not been restored.
Meanwhile, all mentions of the Pathways tool appear to have been removed from Delve's own website. Other pages have also been taken down. Requests for comment sent to Delve have not received a response, and the media inquiry email address listed on their website is no longer functional.
The pattern of disappearing information has not gone unnoticed. When digital footprints start vanishing in the middle of a controversy, it rarely reassures anyone watching.
Why the Tech Community Is Reacting So Strongly
The Delve situation has ignited strong reactions across the technology and startup community, particularly on social media where the story became a trending topic. The reason the response has been so intense goes beyond just one startup's alleged missteps.
Open source licensing is a foundational trust system in software development. Developers share their work freely under licenses precisely because they trust that the rules — often as simple as including a credit — will be followed. When a company allegedly takes that work, removes the attribution, and sells it as proprietary software to paying customers, it strikes at something the entire developer community depends on.
Add to that the fact that Delve's core business is built around helping other companies prove they are trustworthy and compliant, and the reaction becomes even easier to understand. The community note on social media was described as scathing, and based on everything that has now emerged, the sentiment behind it is not difficult to understand.
What Happens Next
The situation around Delve is still developing. Key questions remain unanswered, including what Insight Partners knew during its due diligence process before leading the Series A round, and whether any formal legal action will be taken over the alleged open source license violation.
Delve has not publicly addressed the Sim.ai allegations in any meaningful way. No statement has been issued, no media inquiry has been acknowledged, and the relevant pages on their website have been scrubbed rather than updated.
For a company that positioned itself as a trusted partner in helping businesses stay compliant, the silence itself is telling. The compliance industry depends on transparency, documentation, and accountability. Right now, Delve appears to be offering none of those things.
Whether this story leads to legal consequences, the collapse of investor confidence, or simply a cautionary tale shared in startup circles for years to come, one thing is clear: the scrutiny is not going away, and the questions being asked are ones that only Delve can answer.
