Nicholas Kao
| Nicholas Kao | |
| Occupation | Software entrepreneur, startup founder |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founder of Comfy Deploy |
| Education | IB Diploma, Island School; Bachelor's degree, University of British Columbia |
Nicholas Kao is a software entrepreneur and co-founder of Comfy Deploy, a platform that enables product teams to collaboratively build and deploy AI image and video generation workflows using ComfyUI. The company was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch and is based in San Francisco.[1]
Early life and education
Kao received an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Island School in Hong Kong and a bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia. While at UBC, he was involved with UBC Launch Pad, a student-run software engineering team. Prior to founding Comfy Deploy, Kao held positions at Microsoft, Ad Auris, and Procurify.
Career
Kao co-founded Comfy Deploy with Benny Kok in early 2024. Kok, who had been studying at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, paused his undergraduate studies to work on the company.[2]
Comfy Deploy addresses limitations in ComfyUI, the most widely used open-source framework for building media generation workflows. ComfyUI was originally designed as a single-user tool requiring a local GPU, making it difficult for teams to share workflows and collaborate. Setting up a shared workflow on another person's machine could take days due to differences in environments, models, and custom node configurations.
Comfy Deploy provides a collaborative workspace where teams can share environments, models, and workflows via links. The platform offers version control to eliminate environment inconsistency issues, shared storage for models and outputs, and managed GPU infrastructure including access to hardware such as H100, A100, B200, and other accelerators. Users can install custom nodes and models, train models on their own datasets, and deploy any workflow as a production API without additional engineering work. The platform also includes built-in API authentication and run observability.[3]
At launch, the company operated with a team of two, with Brad Flora serving as their Y Combinator group partner. Comfy Deploy has raised $2.2 million in funding, with investors including Haystack VC and Y Combinator. In 2025, the company announced that it had become fully open-sourced.
Kao and Kok were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the AI category in 2025.
Kao also founded Swift Talk, though details about that venture are limited.
References
- ↑ "Comfy Deploy – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ "Comfy Deploy – Forbes Profile". 'Forbes}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ "Comfy Deploy". 'Comfy Deploy}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.