Kaushik Mahorker
| Kaushik Mahorker | |
| Nationality | American |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, software engineer |
| Known for | Founder and CEO of Wildcard |
| Education | M.S. in Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles |
Kaushik Mahorker is an American entrepreneur and software engineer who is the founder and chief executive officer of Wildcard, an AI-powered e-commerce platform that helps brands optimize their product visibility in AI shopping assistants such as ChatGPT. Wildcard is a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2025 batch.[1]
Early life and education
Mahorker attended Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California, where he was a member of the basketball team. He later earned a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), specializing in artificial intelligence and distributed systems.[2] He has also published academic research affiliated with UCLA, with citations indexed on ResearchGate.
Career
Prior to founding Wildcard, Mahorker held software engineering roles at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he worked on core cloud technologies. He subsequently joined Scale AI, where he served first as a software engineer and later as an engineering manager, overseeing engineering functions related to AI systems and e-commerce applications.
Mahorker co-founded Wildcard in 2025 alongside Yagnya Patel. The company was initially described as a gateway enabling AI agents to identify and use APIs through natural language processing. It subsequently developed into an infrastructure platform focused on AI-driven e-commerce. Wildcard provides brands with SKU-level visibility into how their products appear and perform within AI shopping assistants, including tracking product mentions, analyzing query intelligence, optimizing product attributes, and monitoring competitive positioning.[3]
The platform integrates with major e-commerce systems including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and Square. Wildcard identifies gaps in product data—such as missing attributes that AI systems need to make recommendations—and provides tools to enrich and optimize product detail pages with structured data. The company has outlined plans to help merchants adopt what it calls the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) as AI-assisted shopping becomes more prevalent.
Wildcard is backed by Y Combinator and was part of its Winter 2025 cohort. The company operates in the generative AI, e-commerce, marketing, and retail technology sectors.
References
- ↑ "Wildcard – Sell Products in ChatGPT Shopping". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Kaushik Mahorker – Founder @Wildcard (YC W25)". 'Wildcard}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Wildcard – Get your products mentioned in ChatGPT Shopping". 'Wildcard}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.