The age Pranjali Awasthi was when she founded her first AI company, Delv.AI.
Pranjali Awasthi does not fit the usual founder timeline. She was born in India, moved to Florida as a kid, and started coding at seven, taught by her father, an engineer. By thirteen she was interning in machine learning labs at Florida International University, spending afternoons on research most people do not touch until grad school.
The startup world found her through hackathons. Miami Hack Week pulled her into the city's founder scene, and she earned a spot in HF0, a residential accelerator, while still a teenager. In January 2022, at sixteen, she founded Delv.AI, an AI research tool she describes as ChatGPT with hands, built after watching researchers drown in information overload. It reached a valuation around twelve million dollars, backed by On Deck, Village Global, and others.
She did not stop to celebrate. Awasthi went on to Georgia Tech and graduated in 2025, then rolled straight into her next company, Slashy, a Y Combinator-backed tool billed as the Cursor for email that helps people take back control of their inboxes.
"She has been building since she was seven. The rest of us are still catching up."
The thread through all of it is that she never waited for the standard permission. Most people treat a resume and a diploma as prerequisites to build something real. Awasthi treated them as optional, chasing the work itself, from a lab at thirteen to a company at sixteen to a second one before most people finish school.
This is the mindset ANF exists to put in front of people. Bet on the thing you are building before the world tells you it is safe to. Awasthi has been doing exactly that since she was a kid.
The credentials came later. The building came first.