OpenRound
AI-native technical assessments for engineering hiring
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| Completion rate | 92% |
| Signal vs. take-homes | 3× better |
| Assessment duration | 60–90 minutes |
| Problem library | 100+ statements |
OpenRound is a technical assessment platform built by Fabric that evaluates software engineers by having them work on real codebases using the same AI coding tools they use on the job. The platform launched on April 9, 2026, and is part of the Canopy Spring 2026 cohort at Founders, Inc. in San Francisco.3 It administers technical assessments in a single 90-minute session and produces scored reports across six engineering dimensions.1
OpenRound was built by Fabric, an AI recruitment company co-founded by Abhishek Agarwalla and Ketan Mishra.5 Agarwalla founded Aidetic, a Bengaluru-based AI consulting firm, in July 2018 and ran it as CEO until December 2024.4 Mishra joined Aidetic as COO in March 2020 and stayed through February 2024.5 Under their combined leadership, Aidetic put over 200 enterprise AI solutions into production across NLP, computer vision, and MLOps.5
Agarwalla studied Petroleum Engineering at IIT (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad, graduating in 2017, then joined ZS as a Data Scientist for a year.4 Mishra studied Mining Engineering at the same institution in the same graduating class and joined Wipro as a Data Scientist before moving to Aidetic.5
Fabric, co-founded by Agarwalla and Mishra in early 2024, builds AI-driven recruitment tooling.85 Agarwalla describes the company as growing out of 10,000+ hours of experience hiring engineers, salespeople, and leaders across their previous ventures.4 Fabric's first product is an AI interviewer that conducts first-round screening conversations with candidates; Agarwalla refers to it as "Rebecca" in his company description.4 The company raised a $110K angel round and a $100K pre-seed round to build the platform.910 By early 2026, Fabric had processed over 60,000 interviews across hundreds of companies.5
OpenRound emerged as a distinct Fabric product targeting the technical assessment phase — the stage after initial screening where companies evaluate engineering ability.3 Agarwalla announced the launch on LinkedIn on April 9, 2026, noting that "your engineers use AI everyday on the job" and asking why interviews should ban it.3
The OpenRound product page contrasts three existing interview formats with its own approach.1 LeetCode-style algorithmic exercises test memorization of data structure solutions that most working engineers haven't used since school.1 Take-home assignments became widespread around 2010, but AI coding assistants can complete realistic take-home prompts in under seven minutes, making submissions untrustworthy.1 Work trials require real time from both sides and exclude qualified candidates who cannot commit days to an unpaid evaluation.1
Gauri Jain, a member of Fabric's growth team, shared a story on the day of the launch: an engineering lead she spoke with lost his top candidate after that candidate emailed to say "your take home was exactly what I'd expect from a company three years behind."6 Abhishek Vijayvergiya, who surveyed the interview loops of over 1,000 companies while building OpenRound, published his research on the lack of AI-native assessment methods in the industry.11
An OpenRound assessment runs in four stages.1
In the first stage, the candidate receives an existing codebase matched to the hiring company's tech stack alongside a realistic engineering ticket. The example shown on the product site is ticket AUTH-347: fixing a token refresh race condition in a service handling roughly 12,000 requests per minute across five regions, where the auth middleware's per-session mutex is released before the refresh promise settles, allowing concurrent requests to fire duplicate refreshes and drop valid sessions.1
In the second stage, the candidate has full access to AI coding agents in their CLI — the same tools engineers use daily on the job, not a constrained chat interface.17 OpenRound provides an in-built AI agent within the assessment environment.1
In the third stage, OpenRound generates a detailed evaluation report covering six scored dimensions: Analysis, Discovery, Planning, Judgement, Execution, and AI Collaboration.1 The report shows a play-by-play of how the candidate worked with AI: what they prompted, how they iterated, and the quality of the final solution.1
The fourth stage is a live discussion inside OpenRound's web-based interview platform, where the hiring team can debrief the candidate on their technical choices.1 The product site shows an example where an interviewer asks a candidate to explain why they chose property-level CRDT over operational transformation, with the candidate explaining the conflict model decision.1
The full session runs 60 to 90 minutes.2 OpenRound reports a 92% candidate completion rate and three times better signal compared to take-home assignments.2 Candidates pay nothing; the cost is entirely on the hiring team.2
OpenRound offers three tiers as of April 2026.2 The Starter plan is $149 per month ($129 per month billed annually, equal to $25.80 per assessment) and includes five assessments per month, AI evaluation reports, access to over 100 problem statements, candidate email tooling, and email support. The Pro plan is $499 per month ($449 annually, $22.45 per assessment) and adds custom assessments, custom evaluations, custom AI model selection, and priority support, with 20 assessments per month. The Enterprise tier offers custom volume pricing and adds ATS integration, a dedicated account manager, whiteglove onboarding, and custom branding.2
All plans begin with one free assessment and require no credit card.2 The pricing page notes that a bad hire costs $50,000+ in lost productivity and re-hiring costs.2
OpenRound is part of Canopy Spring 2026 at Founders, Inc., a five-week program at Fort Mason in San Francisco that brings together software, hardware, and media builders.12 Ketan Mishra is listed as Head of Engineering at OpenRound starting April 2026, the month the cohort kicked off.5 The Canopy program provides participants with weekly sessions with founders of major companies and up to $50,000 in partner credits.12
Yadvendra Kshatri, Head of AI at Aays Analytics, is featured in OpenRound's marketing materials: "Openround is the new benchmark in interviews. Nothing comes close to it in terms of signal quality and candidate experience. This has changed hiring for us."2