The controversy surrounding compliance startup Delve has gone from bad to worse this week. Among the new allegations from the anonymous whistleblower known as DeepDelver is the allegation that Delve allegedly took an open source tool and released it as its own work without proper license attribution to or financial agreement with the original developer.
The story goes that the Delve team pitched a code-free tool it called Pathways to a prospect. That prospect would later become whistleblower DeepDelver. DeepDelver recognized that Pathways was similar to Sim.ai’s open source agent creation product called SimStudio, and asked Delve if it was based on SimStudio. The Delve people said they built it themselves, the whistleblower claims.
DeepDelver then presented alleged evidence that this tool was actually a fork – a modified copy – of SimStudio that had been changed just enough to be released as Delves’ own. If proven true, it would be a violation of the Apache Software License, which requires crediting the original developer.
DeepDelver calls this “stealing intellectual property,” which is a bit of a stretch since open source tools are freely available to be used if properly credited. But the irony is hard to miss: Delve, a startup purporting to sell a compliance solution, may have violated a software license.
Sim.ai founder and CEO Emir Karabeg confirmed to TechCrunch that he responded to DeepDelver’s questions about the allegations. He told the whistleblower that Delve had no licensing agreement whatsoever with Sim.ai.
“We knew they were planning to use Sim for something, and later we tried unsuccessfully to sell them a deal,” Karabeg told DeepDelver. “I didn’t realize they were going to sell it out of the box as a stand-alone solution.”
Adding to the awkwardness: Sim.ai was actually a Delve customer, Karabeg told TechCrunch. Both startups were graduates of startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Y Combinator alumni often buy each other’s products. So while Sim.ai paid Delve, Delve didn’t do the same for Sim.ai.
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Karabeg had even expressed sympathy for Delve after the whistleblower dropped the first bombshell last week. DeepDelver initially alleged that Delve falsified customer data and used rubber-stamped auditors, claims that Delve has denied.
Since learning of the Sim.ai allegations, Karabeg has not heard from Delves’ founders. “I consoled my friends at Delve after the first post was published last week, but since I found out about this news, we haven’t been in touch,” he told TechCrunch.
Delves’ alleged methods preceded its Series A funding round led by Insight Partners, the whistleblower also claims. We’ve reached out to Insight Partners to ask about this and about the venerable VC firm’s due diligence process.
We know that Insight Partners’ 2025 blog post about why it led to a $32 million investment in Delve was briefly unavailable on the VC firm’s website. The firm’s LinkedIn post about the investment has not been restored, at least at this time.
Mentions of the Pathways tool on Delves’ site, along with many other pages, also appear to have been scrubbed. Delve did not respond to a request for comment, and the media inquiry address on its website no longer works.
The allegations that Delve may have violated an open source license for a customer and apparently a friend caused such an outcry on X that it has become a trending topic, complete with a scathing community note.