Kaya Celebi is the Co-Founder and CEO of GUILD (YC S26), an AI-native defense contractor automating the U.S. Defense supply chain through intelligent manufacturing and contracting operations.

Kaya holds an MSc in Computer Science from Columbia University and dual BSc degrees in Computer Science and Statistics from Duke University.

With a rare combination of deep AI expertise and financial industry experience, Kaya brings a data-driven, engineering-first approach to modernizing a historically slow-moving defense sector.

Prior to GUILD, Kaya served as AI Tech Lead at Hartree Partners and as an ML Engineer at Morgan Stanley, building sophisticated machine learning systems in high-stakes environments.

GUILD, backed by Y Combinator (Summer 2026), predicts government demand and manufactures defense components in-house, delivering faster and cheaper than legacy incumbents while reshaping the defense supply chain end-to-end.