Diana Hu
Managing Partner at Y Combinator
Diana Hu is a Managing Partner at Y Combinator, promoted in June 2026 after four years as a full-time partner. She co-founded Escher Reality, an augmented reality startup in YC's Summer 2017 batch, and was its CTO until Niantic bought it in 2018. She then led Niantic's AR platform. Earlier she worked in data science and computer vision at Intel and Verizon Labs, on the OnCue TV service.
- Venture capital
- Augmented reality
- Computer vision
Y Combinator
Niantic
- Now
- Managing Partner, Y Combinator2
- Co-founded
- Escher Reality (YC S17), acquired by Niantic1
- Studied
- BS and MS, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon1
- Based
- San Francisco Bay Area3
In their words
Helping founders start startups
3
Experience
- Managing PartnerJun 2026 – now
Promoted in June 2026. YC says she has worked with nearly 230 companies across 18 batches, logged over 2,100 office hours, and works closely with founders in AI, robotics and hard tech.2
- Group Partner2022 – 2026
Joined YC full-time in 2022.2
- Visiting Group Partner2021 – 2022
Returned to YC, where she had been a founder, in 2021.2
- Director of Engineering, Head of AR Platform2018 – 2020
Led Niantic's AR platform in the San Francisco Bay Area after Niantic bought Escher Reality.3
- Co-founder and CTO2016 – 2018
Built an augmented reality API; the company went through YC in Summer 2017 and was acquired by Niantic.3
- Data Science Lead2014 – 2016
After Verizon Labs acquired OnCue TV, led the machine learning and computer vision group for recommender systems and automatic TV ad detection.3
- Data Science Tech Lead2013 – 2014
Led data science for OnCue TV, an Intel spin-off, in Santa Clara.3
- Research Analyst for the Chief of Product2012 – 2013
Her third engineering leadership rotation: executive briefings, white papers and keynotes.3
- Research Engineer, Intel LabsJan 2012 – Jul 2012
Her second rotation, on large-scale machine learning distributed systems and high-performance computing.3
- Software EngineerJul 2011 – Jan 2012
Her first rotation, on computer vision for factory automation.3
- Researcher2010 – 2011
Computer vision research on biometrics.3
- Software Intern3Jun 2010 – Sep 2010
Education
Milestones
- Joins Intel as a software engineer in an engineering leadership rotation3
- Starts work on GraphBuilder, a library for building large-scale graphs on Apache Hadoop3
- Becomes data science lead at Verizon Labs after Verizon buys OnCue TV3
- Co-founds Escher Reality with Ross Finman, in MIT Sandbox's first summer cohort4
- Escher Reality joins Y Combinator's Summer 2017 batch4
- Niantic announces it has acquired Escher Reality; Hu joins Niantic6
- Returns to Y Combinator as a Visiting Group Partner2
- Joins Y Combinator full-time as a Group Partner2
- Lightcone, the YC podcast she co-hosts, releases an episode on prompting for AI agents7
- Promoted to Managing Partner at Y Combinator2