The AI Employee for Banks

Kastle is building the AI employee for banks. Their agents automate operations across mortgage servicing, consumer lending, and other parts of the bank back office. Today they work with 10 of the top 25 mortgage servicers and have processed more than $2 billion in transactions using AI agents. They just raised a $24M Series A, two years after going through YC. In this episode of Founder Firesides, Kastle founders Rishi and Nitish sat down with YC's Diana Hu to share how they went back to zero one month before Demo Day and found their way to one of the hardest places to deploy AI: banking. They talk about finding their first customers and what it takes to make AI agents reliable enough to handle real financial transactions. https://www.kastle.ai Chapters: 00:00 — Intro 00:05 — What Kastle Does 01:00 — Why Banks Need AI Employees 02:50 — Going Back to Zero Before Demo Day 05:00 — Finding the Idea for Kastle 06:43 — Landing Their First Customer 08:18 — Moving Into a Customer’s Office 08:59 — The Future of AI Employees in Banking Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Diana HuhostRishiguestNitishguest

Sep 18, 202611mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: September 18, 2026
Duration: 11m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Kastle is building the AI employee for banks. Their agents automate operations across mortgage servicing, consumer lending, and other parts of the bank back office. Today they work with 10 of the top 25 mortgage servicers and have processed more than $2 billion in transactions using AI agents. They just raised a $24M Series A, two years after going through YC. In this episode of Founder Firesides, Kastle founders Rishi and Nitish sat down with YC's Diana Hu to share how they went back to zero one month before Demo Day and found their way to one of the hardest places to deploy AI: banking. They talk about finding their first customers and what it takes to make AI agents reliable enough to handle real financial transactions. https://www.kastle.ai Chapters: 00:00 — Intro 00:05 — What Kastle Does 01:00 — Why Banks Need AI Employees 02:50 — Going Back to Zero Before Demo Day 05:00 — Finding the Idea for Kastle 06:43 — Landing Their First Customer 08:18 — Moving Into a Customer’s Office 08:59 — The Future of AI Employees in Banking Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

SPEAKERS

Diana Hu
host
Host on Y Combinator’s Root Access (YC).
Rishi
guest
Co-founder of Kastle AI, building an “AI employee” to automate bank operations.
Nitish
guest
Co-founder of Kastle AI, focused on automating mortgage servicing and other bank workflows with AI.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Diana Hu and Rishi, The AI Employee for Banks explores kastle’s AI “employee” automates bank operations without core replacements Kastle AI builds an “AI employee” for banks that automates operational workflows, starting with mortgage servicing and expanding into broader consumer lending operations.

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