Nikhil Ruia is Co-Founder and CTO at Ernd, a Y Combinator F2026 startup building a card for companies that pay for AI.

Nikhil studied Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania (class of 2027) and served as a Backend Engineer at Penn Labs on the Penn Courses platform. He also worked as a Machine Learning Researcher at The Wharton School and held software engineering and finance internships in fintech and trading.

Nikhil grew up in Glenview, Illinois, and has been building software since high school, when he made games. Outside of engineering he enjoys cars, movies, and karaoke, and is involved in UPMUNC.

At Ernd, Nikhil leads engineering for a card offering rewards on AI spend, with 4% back on AI spend and 2% on everything else planned at launch. Ernd was accepted into Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch and is based in San Francisco.

Ernd pools startups' purchasing power to negotiate discounts, higher usage limits, and priority support from AI providers. In its first 48 hours, the team onboarded 10 startups and landed 5 vendor partnerships.