Steamship
YC W21 startup providing managed hosting + deployment for LLM agents — 'one-click deploy' for LangChain / agent code. Founded by Ted Benson (ex-Google Brain). Pre-seed + seed funded YC + Twin Ventures. Positioned as Heroku for AI agents — but the agent-platform space crowded post-2023, and Steamship's commercial momentum has slowed vs Vercel AI / Modal / Bedrock. As of 2026-10-29 www.steamship.com returns 404 and docs.steamship.com serves an expired TLS certificate; the last Python SDK release was v2.17.34 (2024-01-24); the python-client repo is not archived.
Archived · Verified 2026-10-29 · fresh as of 2026-10-29 · 27 cited facts, 1 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Tier
- T3
- Created
- 2021 (YC W21) vendor fix
- Latest release
- v2.17.34 (2024-01-24) — steamship Python SDK registry fix
- License
- MIT (python-client SDK); hosted platform proprietary repo fix
- Pricing
- Free + paid tiers (per-call + storage) vendor fix
- Funding
- Seed: YC + Twin Ventures + others (~$3M+ disclosed) vendor fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-29 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- open-core (estimate) fix
- Developer activity
- OpenRank 1.29 (12-mo avg 6.48) · 3 participants — 2024-07 third-party fix
When to use
Optimised for: one-click deployment / hosting for LangChain agents
Anti-fit: not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
Pros & cons
Pros
Early-mover in agent-deployment hosting (Heroku-for-agents); YC backing; LangChain integration native.
Cons
Crowded space — Vercel AI / Modal / Bedrock / Replicate provide alternative paths; small team; limited 2024-25 product velocity vs peers.
Claims & capabilities
YC W21; one-click deploy for LangChain agents; managed hosting + persistent memory tier
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- Backend storage
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- Deployment
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- MCP
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- A2A
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — orchestration platform, not memory product
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- Adept ACT T3
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- InstructLab (Red Hat / IBM) T2
Red Hat / IBM-stewarded open-source framework for community-driven LLM alignment + fine-tuning (LAB method, IBM Research 2024; Granite models). Apache 2.0. Main CLI repo archived 2026-04-23 after a 2025 refactor into separate libraries — synthetic data generation in SDG Hub and training in Training Hub (Red-Hat-AI-Innovation-Team). Not strictly a multi-agent framework.
- Lindy T2
Lindy is a no-code multi-agent automation platform from Florent Crivello (ex-Teleport, ex-Twitter). Targets consumer / SMB segment with email triage, meeting scheduling, CRM-update agents. $50M Series A Oct-2024 led by Andreessen Horowitz + Sequoia. Distinct from Zapier / n8n traditional automation by putting LLMs at the core of every workflow node.
Sources (26 cited facts, 1 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Multi-agent deployment / hosting platform (LangChain-like infra) vendor
- What it does & what's distinct YC W21 startup providing managed hosting + deployment for LLM agents — 'one-click deploy… registry
- Claims / benefits YC W21; one-click deploy for LangChain agents; managed hosting + persistent memory tier vendor
- Created 2021 (YC W21) vendor
- Latest release v2.17.34 (2024-01-24) — steamship Python SDK registry
- License MIT (python-client SDK); hosted platform proprietary repo
- GitHub steamship-core/python-client — ~320 stars, last commit 2024-02 repo
- Funding Seed: YC + Twin Ventures + others (~$3M+ disclosed) vendor
- Pricing Free + paid tiers (per-call + storage) vendor
- HQ San Francisco, US vendor
- Founders / pedigree Ted Benson (CEO; ex-Google Brain, ex-Pinterest); Doug Reid (CTO) vendor
- Agent abstraction multi-agent hosting / deployment (LangChain-compatible) vendor
- LLM lock multi-vendor (BYO) vendor
- Runtimes Python (primary) vendor
- Optimised for one-click deployment / hosting for LangChain agents vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure LangChain (deep integration); Heroku-style PaaS heritage; YC alumni network vendor
- Pros Early-mover in agent-deployment hosting (Heroku-for-agents); YC backing; LangChain integ… vendor
- Cons Crowded space — Vercel AI / Modal / Bedrock / Replicate provide alternative paths; small… vendor
- Project & sources www.steamship.com/ vendor
- cost-input-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-output-usd-per-mtok 0 vendor
- cost-tier free vendor
- cost-pricing-model free-tier vendor
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
- developer-activity-opendigger {"activity":1.45,"as_of":"2024-07","openrank_12mo":6.48,"openrank_current":1.29,"partici… third-party
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
Related systems
References (1)
- LangChain (framework) depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: LangChain (deep integration); Heroku-style PaaS heritage; YC alumni network
Referenced by (1)
- LlamaIndex (framework) integrates with — LlamaIndex has an official data reader integration package llama-index-readers-steamship in its repo. (verified 2026-10-29)