rl-list.com
UPDATED 2026.06.07
rl-list.com · Vendors · Refresh
#20

Refresh

Commercial
medium confidence
www.refresh.dev ↗ · Status: active confirmed · Founded 2025

Refresh (YC X25) builds simulation engines / RL environments with verifiable rewards for coding and computer use, partnering with frontier labs and enterprises to train AI software-engineering and computer-use 'coworker' capabilities across terminal and GUI.

Key facts
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA, USAconfirmed cite
Headcount band
1-10confirmed cite
Total raised
unknown
Last round
unknown
SOC 2
unknown cite
What they sell
environmentsconfirmed cite
Open source
noestimated cite
Deployment
unknown

Scale & velocity

Current headcount
~8 employees (as of 2026-06-07)reported cite
Headcount growth
unknown
Open roles
3reported cite
Other locations
unknown
Distributed / remote
noestimated cite

Research depth

Has researchers
yesreported cite
Researcher count
unknown
Backgrounds
Christopher Settles (CEO), ex-Uber AI ML tech lead; CS degree from UIUC, Erik Quintanilla (CTO), ex-Capital One, ex-Amazon (computer vision / data scraping), Team described as ex-Uber ML and ex-Amazon scraping; reportedly turned down Scale AI offersreported cite
Papers / benchmarks
unknown cite

Capital

Total raised
unknown
Last round
unknown
Investors
Y Combinatorreported cite
Valuation
unknown
Revenue signals
unknown

Security & compliance

SOC 2
unknown cite
Other certifications
unknown
Security page
unknown cite

Product

What they sell
environmentsconfirmed cite
Open source
noestimated cite
License
unknown
Deployment model
unknown
Maturity
private betaestimated cite
Notable customers
Frontier AI labs (unnamed) self-claimed cite

Buyer analysis

Best fit: Frontier labs needing custom RL training environments and datasets for software-engineering and computer-use agent capabilities.

How we verified this

Re-verified against primary sources (YC company profile, YC launch page, refresh.dev homepage) plus web search. Confirmed this is the CORRECT company matching the directory note ('code and computer use environments'): Refresh (YC X25, Spring 2025), founders Christopher Settles and Erik Quintanilla, building RL simulation environments for coding and computer use, partnering with frontier labs. Founded year (2025), HQ (San Francisco), and small headcount (YC lists 8; LinkedIn ~7, 1-10 band) all confirmed. Funding remains unknown: no primary source confirms total raised, round stage, or valuation; the ~$500K pre-seed figure is a single weak LinkedIn snippet, correctly left unknown. Downgraded notable_investors to 'reported' (only YC batch participation verifiable; angel/Weekend Fund unconfirmed). Customers are self-claimed 'frontier labs', not third-party verified. No trust page / SOC2 (security URL 404). Corrected headcount headline to ~8 (primary YC), upgraded headcount_band to confirmed, downgraded open_roles_count to reported, and removed an unverifiable GitHub-org attribution. Overall confidence: medium.

Related vendors

Sources

  1. www.refresh.dev/ · 2026-06-07, Official homepage, simulation engines for coding and computer use, verifiable rewards, frontier lab/enterprise partnerships
  2. www.withrefresh.com/ · 2026-06-07, Mirror/alternate official site with same positioning
  3. www.refresh.dev/careers · 2026-06-07, 3 open roles, all San Francisco full-time; stack Vercel/Supabase/Render
  4. www.ycombinator.com/companies/refresh · 2026-06-07, YC profile, Spring 2025 (X25), founders Christopher Settles & Erik Quintanilla, ~8 employees, SF
  5. www.ycombinator.com/launches/Ncy-refresh-turning-real-work-into-rl-train · 2026-06-07, YC launch, archived web for computer-use environments, mechanistic interpretability, targets SWE-Bench/Terminal-Bench/OS-World
  6. www.linkedin.com/company/refresh-dot-dev · 2026-06-07, LinkedIn public snippet, ~7 employees, founded 2025, San Francisco, Software Development
  7. www.linkedin.com/in/erikquintanilla/ · 2026-06-07, Co-founder & CTO profile
  8. www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-settles · 2026-06-07, Co-founder & CEO profile
Last updated 2026-06-07 · Every quantitative field carries a source and a confidence tag. Fields we could not source publicly are marked unknown, never estimated. See the methodology.