In January 2026, West Egg Labs incorporated in San Francisco with a $250K pre-seed from Entrepreneurs First.
The company was founded by Aron Frishberg and Akiva Himelhoch, who left the University of Chicago to build it. Frishberg had previously worked at the hedge fund Third Point and at Fira, a Y Combinator startup; Himelhoch, a Bronfman Fellow, had contributed to machine learning research.
The first product was Mona, a video streaming platform for AI-generated movies. The parent company's name is a nod to The Great Gatsby: West Egg is home to the novel's title character.
Within weeks, the founders' attention kept pulling toward a bigger question: why robots weren't in homes yet. In February, West Egg Labs pivoted, and Gatsby was born.