Latest Interviews

Internal Agent Builder

Y Combinator is funding founders to build internal agent platforms that enable every employee to create personal AI tools for automating routine tasks. This initiative leverages secure infrastructure integrated with daily software to handle sensitive data, effectively reducing time spent on mundane operations like term sheet reviews. The strategic goal is to eliminate low-value work so staff can dedicate their efforts to high-value human activities, such as supporting founders, while YC invites entrepreneurs to develop the foundational AI infrastructure required for this shift.

Software Tools To Make Robots

Robotics is approaching a pivotal moment as foundation models overcome historical barriers of cost and environmental fragility, enabling robust real-world performance in sectors like industrial inspection and autonomous agriculture. Immediate commercial traction is evident through acquisitions such as John Deere's purchase of Bear Flag Robotics, validating the B2B market over consumer applications. Capitalizing on this maturation, the sector is actively securing funding for software toolkits while investors signal strong bullish sentiment to support founders building the next generation of capable machines.

AI for Residential Security

Despite the commercial security sector achieving disruptive growth through AI-driven facial recognition and virtual guards deployed by firms like Verkada and Lumana, the stagnant $20 billion global residential market remains dominated by legacy hardware. The $1 billion acquisition of Ring highlighted the immense value of connected video sensors, yet a critical gap persists in applying advanced artificial intelligence to residential safety. This event focuses on the significant opportunity for a new entrant to leverage AI capabilities and transform the static residential home security landscape into a proactive, intelligent safety ecosystem.

Healthcare AI

With administrative tasks consuming roughly one-third of the US healthcare system's $4 trillion annual budget, a new wave of startups has emerged to solve the interoperability crisis caused by absent APIs. These companies are building specialized infrastructure to extract, organize, and integrate data from disparate systems, effectively creating the foundational layer needed for broader data integration. This emerging ecosystem aims to drastically reduce the $1 trillion in wasted administrative spending by enabling secondary startups to address complex data connectivity issues.

AI Personal Tutor for Everyone

Grant Sanderson

Building on JCR Licklider's 1960s concept of human-computer symbiosis, the initiative leverages modern multimodal reasoning models to deliver the interactive, step-by-step visualizations and voice explanations seen in benchmarks like 3Blue1Brown. This approach overcomes historical limitations by offering true personalization that decomposes complex topics into accessible formats for every learner with basic internet access. The project concludes with an open invitation for developers of AI tools to collaborate in realizing a vision where high-quality, personalized tutoring is universally available.

AI Personal Assistant

Driven by recent advances in Large Language Models, a new class of AI personal assistants is emerging to transform static task lists into automated execution systems that act as full-fledged chief of staff. These advanced tools leverage deep contextual understanding of a user's correspondence, scheduling, and work routines to independently handle emails, calendar management, and recurring processes while maintaining user approval controls. The initiative seeks strategic collaboration with startups to bring this executive assistance technology to market, ultimately offloading operational burdens so users can dedicate their attention exclusively to high-value strategic work.

Derek Thompson’s advice for founders is to follow your curiosity.

Derek Thompson

The speaker frames human existence as a fleeting three-second cosmological interval, urging individuals to shift from mass-consumer roles to becoming unique creators in critical technical fields. By prioritizing curiosity-driven work in hard technology, robotics, green cement, and new energy capture, this approach aims to solve enduring global problems that will remain relevant for centuries. This philosophy contrasts with transient pursuits, emphasizing the production of work that no one else would make as the only path to lasting significance.

Gustaf’s Startup Framework For Spending Money

Gustaf

This analysis argues that startups should avoid modeling themselves after large enterprises, as early-stage organizations lack the functional departments necessary for such structures. The singular focus must remain on discovering product-market fit, since premature adoption of roles like dedicated advertising or specialized offices creates operational distractions that hinder core validation. Founders who prioritize mimicking enterprise maturity risk wasting vital capital and energy on activities that do not contribute to establishing a viable business model.

B2A: Software Where the Customers Will All Be Agents

The entity introduces a "b2a" investment thesis targeting companies that build software for AI agents as primary customers, aiming to shift the internet landscape from automated impersonation to first-class agent citizenship. This strategy prioritizes funding infrastructure, logistics, and legal frameworks that enable agents to autonomously handle payments, travel bookings, and commercial contracts. Mirroring the coexistence of human and algorithmic traders in stock markets, the approach projects a massive expansion of AI-to-AI interactions across the entire internet ecosystem.

Vertical AI Agents

Sam Altman

Vertical AI agents, which are specialized software applications built on large language models to automate specific workflows, are emerging as a primary pathway to building billion-dollar startups across dozens of distinct market sectors. Industry experts highlight high-potential use cases ranging from automated tax accountants and medical billers to dedicated phone support agents and quality assurance testers. This strategy has received strong validation from Sam Altman, who explicitly stated he would focus on building vertical AI agents if he were to restart his career at age 24.

AI Personal Staff for Everyone

Historically, personalized knowledge work such as legal, financial, and medical assistance remained exclusive to the wealthy due to the reliance on human labor, while software democratized other services like transportation and photo organization. The organization now aims to bridge this persistent gap by developing advanced AI systems capable of automating these specialized roles for the general public. To achieve this mission, the group is actively recruiting collaborators and employees to build "personal AI staff" products that will deliver elite-level services to billions of users.

Browser/Computer Automation

Following demonstrations by OpenAI's "Operator" and Anthropic, AI agents now possess the capability to browse the web and operate desktop applications, effectively treating all digital interfaces as programmable APIs. This technological leap, supported by emerging open-source tools, enables the full automation of human-executable workflows and is estimated to expand the addressable use cases for AI agents by a factor of ten. Industry observers predict this shift will catalyze significant innovation across applications built upon these newly accessible agent capabilities.

Datacenters

The initiative aims to revolutionize AI infrastructure by deploying fully automated, "lights out" data centers that reduce construction timelines and costs through software-managed site selection, power management, and autonomous robotics. Key figures are currently seeking startup funding to transition from traditional multi-year projects to 24-7 operations where robots handle all facility tasks without human intervention. This approach promises to solve current industry bottlenecks by introducing innovative solutions in cooling, material procurement, and project management to accelerate the deployment of faster and cheaper data centers.

What David Lieb and his team built eventually became the foundation for Google Photos.

David Lieb

Facing imminent failure with dwindling funds, the founders of a struggling mobile company consulted Y Combinator's Paul Graham after their primary app and a secondary photo-sharing attempt failed to generate revenue. Graham challenged them to abandon their current path and build a comprehensive replacement for the native iPhone Photos app, a scope the founder initially deemed impossible. The team subsequently pivoted to this ambitious vision by leveraging identified flaws in Apple's existing software to secure their survival.

Public Safety Technology

Y Combinator is actively recruiting startups to advance public safety, building on Flock Safety's current achievement of solving 10% of US crimes with its license plate camera technology. The accelerator seeks new ventures focusing on computer vision for emergency response, community-police collaboration tools, and operational efficiency technologies to help meet the industry goal of solving 25% of all crimes within the year. This initiative positions YC as a key resource provider designed to facilitate the growth of companies driving this expanding public safety movement.