Further Damaged: The Troubled Reputation of Delve

The Controversy Surrounding Compliance Startup Delve

Recently, the controversy surrounding compliance startup Delve has escalated, with fresh allegations emerging from an anonymous whistleblower known as DeepDelver. Among these allegations is the claim that Delve allegedly took an open source tool and passed it off as its own work without proper license attribution or monetary agreement with the original developer.

The story goes that the Delve team presented a no-code tool called Pathways to a prospect, who would later become the whistleblower DeepDelver. DeepDelver noticed similarities between Pathways and Sim.ai’s open source agent-building product called SimStudio and questioned Delve about it. Despite DeepDelver’s suspicions, Delve maintained that they had developed Pathways themselves.

However, DeepDelver later presented evidence suggesting that Pathways was actually a modified copy of SimStudio, in violation of the Apache software license, which requires proper credit to be given to the original developer. While open source tools are freely available for use, they must be credited appropriately.

Sim.ai’s founder and CEO, Emir Karabeg, confirmed that Delve had no license agreement with Sim.ai, despite using their product. Karabeg expressed surprise that Delve attempted to sell their product as a stand-alone solution without an agreement in place.

Adding to the complexity of the situation, Sim.ai was a customer of Delve, highlighting the intertwined relationships between startups in the industry.

Karabeg initially expressed sympathy for Delve after the initial allegations surfaced, but has since not heard from Delve’s founders following the Sim.ai revelations. The whistleblower also suggests that Delve’s alleged misconduct occurred prior to its Series A funding round led by Insight Partners.

Insight Partners, the VC firm behind Delve’s funding, has faced questions about its due diligence process in light of these allegations. The firm’s 2025 blog post about investing in Delve temporarily went offline, raising further concerns.

References to the Pathways tool on Delve’s website and other pages have been removed, and the company has not responded to media inquiries. The allegations against Delve have sparked significant backlash online, leading to a trending topic and community outcry.