About
Locke is building an AI-native government-affairs firm for early-stage companies, helping them monitor regulations, lobby policymakers, and win government contracts. It differentiates itself by combining elite lobbyists with AI agents to deliver government-affairs work faster and more cheaply than legacy firms.
Market
Locke competes in GovTech and government-affairs/public-affairs services, positioning itself as an AI-native, agentic alternative to traditional lobbying firms and conventional policy-intelligence software. Its differentiation is the combination of elite lobbyists and AI agents that deliver real-time monitoring, citation-backed analysis, lobbying, and government-contracting work for early-stage companies faster and more cheaply than legacy firms.
Locke targets early-stage companies, especially deep-tech, defense, robotics, healthcare, GovTech, AI infrastructure, energy, space, advanced manufacturing, biotech, fintech, public safety, and critical-infrastructure businesses. Its likely buyers are founders and policy, regulatory, business-development, or government-contracting leaders who need lobbying, regulatory intelligence, compliance analysis, or help winning government contracts.
At a Glance
Problem
Locke is addressing the widening gap between companies and government: its mission statement says that government has become slow and difficult to reach, while companies tackling major problems have been left behind. For early-stage companies, this creates a practical disadvantage in understanding regulations, influencing policy, and accessing public-sector opportunities. The clearest use case is helping a startup navigate government and win government contracts.
The economics are substantial but traditional: reported lobbying spending reached approximately $5.3 billion in 2025, and Locke positions its service as faster and cheaper than a legacy government-affairs firm. Locke has not publicly disclosed its pricing, expected savings, or contract economics, so the value proposition is currently qualitative rather than financially quantified.
Product / Service
Locke Government Affairs is an AI-native, agentic government-affairs firm that combines elite lobbyists with AI agents. Its system monitors legislation, regulations, hearings, requests for proposals, and other government signals in real time, delivering updates through Slack and producing citation-backed briefs about current and forthcoming rules.
The service also includes human lobbying: Locke says clients work with elite lobbyists to shape and pass legislation from state capitols through the federal defense budget. This makes Locke closer to a technology-enabled professional-services firm than a standalone software product; the intended benefit is to give companies continuous policy intelligence and real-world government engagement at greater speed and lower cost than a conventional firm.
Market
Locke competes in GovTech and the broader government-affairs, public-policy, lobbying, and government-contracting market. Its adjacent software competitors include Quorum, FiscalNote, Plural, and USLege, which provide combinations of legislative tracking, policy intelligence, AI summaries, stakeholder management, and public-affairs workflows. Locke is differentiated in positioning by combining similar intelligence capabilities with lobbyists and execution around policy influence and government contracts, putting it in competition with both software vendors and traditional lobbying firms.
The company is extremely early. Y Combinator lists Locke as founded in 2026, active, and part of its Summer 2026 batch; its company profile identifies Parth Badhwar as founder and reports two employees in San Francisco. No public customer, revenue, pilot, or completed-contract metrics appear in the cited company materials, so Locke should be treated as a pre-revenue or early-validation-stage company for diligence purposes, although pre-revenue status is not explicitly confirmed.
Founders & Leadership
Funding History
Y Combinator
Recent News
Y Combinator’s 2026 GovTech directory identifies Locke Government Affairs as an AI-native government affairs firm helping early-stage companies monitor regulations, lobby policymakers, and win government contracts.
Locke announced its Government Affairs offering, describing it as the first AI-native government affairs firm. The service combines lobbyists and AI agents to help companies monitor regulations, lobby policymakers, and pursue government contracts.
Y Combinator’s company profile says Locke was founded in 2026 by Parth Badhwar and is building Locke Government Affairs to help early-stage companies monitor regulations, lobby policymakers, and win government contracts.
Locke’s official website describes the company as an applied AI business changing how companies and governments work together, with a focus on regulatory monitoring, lobbying, and government contracts.
Locke’s company-page announcement describes the company as building an AI government affairs firm, with a launch video planned. The post identifies Parth Badhwar as founder and CEO.
Active Roles
2Business Model
Locke appears to monetize through client-paid professional government-affairs services, including regulatory monitoring and compliance briefs, lobbying, and government-contract support for early-stage companies. Public sources do not disclose whether engagements use retainers, subscriptions, project fees, or another pricing structure.