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 are the claim that Delve allegedly took an open source tool and passed it off as its own without proper license attribution or a monetary agreement with the original developer.
The story goes that the Delve team pitched a no-code tool they called Pathways to a prospect. This prospect would later become the whistleblower DeepDelver. DeepDelver recognized that Pathways was very similar to Sim.ai’s open source agent creation product called SimStudio and asked Delve if it was based on SimStudio. The people at Delve 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, changed enough to pass itself off as its own Delve. If this is true, this would be a violation of the Apache Software License, which requires crediting the original developer.
DeepDelver calls this phenomenon “intellectual property theft,” which is a bit strange since open source tools are freely available for use if properly credited. But the irony is hard to miss: Delve, a startup that purports 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 license agreement with Sim.ai.
“We knew they were planning to use Sim for something and later 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 standalone solution.”
Adding to the confusion: Sim.ai was actually a customer of Delve, Karabeg told TechCrunch. Both startups were grads 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 was falsifying customer data and using rubber-stamping controllers, claims Delve has denied.
Since learning of the Sim.ai allegations, Karabeg has not heard from Delve’s founders. “I was consoling my friends at Delve after the first post went live last week, but since hearing this news we haven’t been in touch,” he told TechCrunch.
Delve’s alleged methods preceded its Series A funding round led by Insight Partners, the whistleblower also claims. We reached out to Insight Partners to ask about this and 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, for a while, unavailable on the VC firm’s website. The brand Post on LinkedIn about the investment has not been restored, at least at this time.
References to the Pathways tool on the Delve website, along with many other pages as well appear to have been cleaned. Delve did not respond to a request for comment and the media inquiries address on its website is no longer operational.
Claims that Delve may have violated an open source license from a customer and, apparently, a friend caused such an outcry at X that it has become a trending topic, concluded with a caustic communal note.
