A1Zap × YC

A1Zap - the social network layer for AI apps

A1Zap by A1Base is a mobile app that turns AI tools into social objects, letting users build chatbots, games, and small interactive utilities and push them straight into a campus-scale feed where friends, classmates, and clubs can use them together. The launch starts with US college campuses, where student builders have already shipped things like a rent transparency tool at UT Austin, a matchmaker chatbot at Harvard, a creator directory at Michigan, and a meme generator, all distributed through the same social graph and an integrated messaging layer. It's pitched as the social network where people build things for each other, where you create tools, games, chatbots, and interactive experiences and share them instantly with your friends, your class, and your campus. The company comes out of Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch and is based in San Francisco , founded by Pennie Huang and Pasha Rayan . Rayan previously co-founded Forage (YC W19), and in early 2025 he and co-founder Pennie Li, also a UNSW graduate, entered Y Combinator with A1Base, initially focused on infrastructure that enabled AI agents to communicate via SMS, Slack, iMessage, and Teams . A1Zap is the consumer-facing product built on top of that messaging infrastructure, with the underlying platform letting agents message users, groups, and communities directly within the A1Zap app, with developers able to list agents and let people start conversations through an API . The launch matters because most AI app distribution today is one-to-one prompting in isolation, while A1Zap is betting that the next wave of consumer AI looks more like UGC, with prompt-to-create templates, a scrollable feed of community-made experiences, and direct sharing replacing the blank chat window. Access is currently invite-only, with the team rolling out gradually , and the product is live on iOS for students at participating campuses.

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