Chromie, a Y Combinator Summer 2026 startup that has begun branding itself Capto, has launched what it calls an AI operating system for government contractors, a single workspace for tracking federal, state and local bids. The company said the product supports contractors with more than 100 prime awards and over $250 million in obligated contract value, a figure that is its own claim and has not been independently verified.
The market it is chasing is enormous. The Government Accountability Office put federal contract obligations for fiscal 2024 at $755 billion, and a Congressional Research Service report dated March 20, 2026, said more than $183 billion of that went to small businesses.
What the product does
Chromie describes the product as "the AI operating system for government contracting," according to its website and its Launch YC post. It is built from five modules: Company Brain, Discover, Recompete, Capture and Pipeline.
Company Brain is the foundation. It converts a firm's profile, documents, past performance and team context into what the company calls verified facts and knowledge pages, and the company's site says fit scores, capture assessments and drafts all draw from it.
Discover watches SAM.gov, the federal contracting portal, along with state, local and education (SLED) portals. Rather than matching on keywords alone, it scores each solicitation against a company's profile, weighing NAICS codes (the industry classifications contractors register under), set-aside eligibility, capabilities and past performance. The site says every score arrives with a written rationale.
Recompete attempts something harder: predicting when contracts will return to market. According to the company's website, it analyzes expiring awards, incumbents and agency budget signals, then produces estimated values, expected posting dates and owning contacts. The launch post goes further, citing "backtested PWin models" (probability-of-win estimates) and "agency signals years before RFP." Those are marketing assertions, and as of Oct. 27, 2026, the company has not provided a public testing methodology for the models on its site, its blog or its Launch YC post.
Capture parses solicitation documents for evaluation criteria, page limits, deadlines and set-aside status. It maps those requirements against a firm's capabilities and generates a readiness assessment, along with prime, subcontractor and teaming simulations. One example on the site shows an evaluation split of 40% technical, 30% past performance and 30% price.
