What Is the Future of AI? Let's Hear from a YC Founder
Charles, co-founder of YC S26 startup Conifer, on local-first AI inference, model routing, and why privacy will decide the default.
Charles · Co-Founder at Conifer (YC S26) · San Francisco · 36 min · 2026-07-19
About this episode
Conifer is building local-first AI inference: instead of routing everything to one model, it sends each request to the best available model, balancing performance, cost, privacy and speed.
Charles was on the national debate circuit and headed for tech law before deciding that building products creates more impact than writing policy. He then got obsessed with local models — and that became Conifer.
What we cover
- Why most AI interactions should not happen in the cloud
- How model routing works in practice, and what it costs to get wrong
- Why privacy is likely to decide which AI setup becomes the default
- Going from a law-track plan to a Y Combinator batch
Key takeaway
The non-technical background was not a handicap. Framing a problem clearly is most of the founder job.