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Saffron

ai-native technical assessments and work trials.

Saffron is building a platform to test how well candidates can use coding agents. The way engineers write code has fundamentally changed, but the way companies evaluate them hasn't. Saffron gives hiring teams full visibility into how candidates use AI agents to build, debug, and ship real features on an actual codebase. Saffron was founded by Robert Chondro (formerly MIT and Jane Street), Jerry Yao (Stanford and Jane Street), and Kazuma Choji (Harvey Mudd, published in NeurIPS and ICML), and is backed by Y Combinator (P26) and Afore Capital.
Active Founders
Robert Chondro
Robert Chondro
Founder / CEO
ceo prev. math and cs @ mit building AI-native technical assessments to vet/hire SWEs
Kazuma Choji
Kazuma Choji
Founder
Building software to test how well swe's code with ai!!! _______ ex. cs/math @ Harvey Mudd High school NeurIPS, ICML, and ICCV author
Jerry Yao
Jerry Yao
Founder
ex. stanford, building ai native technical assessments
Saffron
Founded:2025
Batch:Spring 2026
Team Size:3
Status:
Active
Location:San Francisco
Primary Partner:David Lieb