Michael Zhou is the solo Founder of Codag, a Y Combinator S26-backed AI infrastructure startup building drop-in log compression for AI agents, enabling faster and cheaper agent debugging.

Michael holds a BSc in Computer Science and Neuroscience from the University of Toronto and turned down seven-figure software engineering offers to pursue entrepreneurship full-time.

Michael brings deep infrastructure and platform engineering expertise, having bootstrapped Codag through five pivots and zero bank balance before earning his YC acceptance, all without telling his mom.

Prior to founding Codag, Michael worked as a Software Engineer at Okta and Shopify, where he built infrastructure and web platform tooling that now underpins his product vision.

Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch, Codag addresses a critical gap in the agentic AI era by compressing massive logs down to only the lines that matter, dramatically reducing token costs for AI teams.