Latest Interviews

AI Coding Agent for Hardware-Optimized Code

NVIDIA's market dominance relies on CUDA's hand-optimized code, but emerging reasoning models like DeepSeq R1 can now generate comparable AI-optimized kernels, offering a strategic pathway to bypass the critical shortage of low-level system programmers. Founders who develop tools to automate this kernel generation can enable broader adoption of competing hardware and reduce ecosystem dependency on NVIDIA. In response to this opportunity, Y Combinator is actively soliciting applications from entrepreneurs building AI-generated kernel solutions.

Devtools for AI Agents

A venture firm has pivoted its two-year strategy to fund startups disrupting legacy players through next-generation AI agents capable of autonomous decision-making. Leveraging recent reasoning breakthroughs from model releases like "01" and "03," the firm targets investments in developer tools and building blocks that enable the creation of specialized agent teams. This initiative aims to integrate these autonomous systems across industries, empowering users to enhance productivity and creativity while inviting founders to collaborate on shaping the future of software.

Inference AI Infra in the World of Test-Time Compute

As capital allocation shifts from pre-training to inference for advanced models like DeepSeq R1 and OpenAI 01, surging API demand creates a critical infrastructure cost bottleneck for AI applications. Startups addressing this challenge by rebuilding the inference stack through optimized software tooling and efficient GPU workload management are positioned to unlock significant market growth. Y Combinator is currently soliciting applications from founders developing these essential solutions to enable scalable application deployment.

Compliance and Audit

A global workforce of nearly four million compliance professionals faces mounting pressure from complex regulatory frameworks like GDPR and ESG reporting, which rely on inefficient manual audits of unstructured data. Large Language Models are emerging as a transformative solution capable of processing entire datasets to continuously identify anomalies and contradictions across global financial records. This shift enables the transition from limited sampling to comprehensive, real-time auditing, creating a significant market opportunity for developers of automated compliance technologies.

A Secure AI App Store

Y Combinator is seeking founders to build a new operating system layer and app store for AI that centralizes personal data in a shared memory architecture while enforcing strict, user-consented privacy controls. This platform will provide simplified APIs for developers to create context-aware applications, such as travel agents and reading assistants, without handling payments directly. By establishing a vetted marketplace infrastructure, the initiative aims to solve industry-wide distribution challenges and allow startups to lead the creation of secure, intelligent AI tools before major tech giants dominate the space.

AI-Aided Engineering Tools

The event identifies a decades-long stagnation in engineering tools characterized by high computational costs and barriers to expert-level entry, urging a transition to next-generation AI-powered alternatives. It challenges founders to develop systems that integrate advanced reasoning capabilities to solve complex mathematics and physics problems more efficiently. This shift aims to enable engineers to rapidly design and construct high-quality physical infrastructure, ranging from satellites to circuits, without relying on traditional, labor-intensive workflows.

The Winter 2025 application deadline is in less than a week! Apply at ycombinator.com/apply.

Y Combinator is accepting applications for its Winter 2025 batch by November 12th as it transitions to a four-batch annual schedule to capitalize on a unique twenty-year cycle of technological advancement. The program specifically targets early-stage technical teams with co-founders, emphasizing that hesitation is unnecessary given the organization's history of radically altering founders' trajectories even when applications began on a whim. By encouraging ambitious applicants to submit proposals immediately, YC asserts that the selection process offers a risk-free opportunity to fundamentally reshape the future course of their ventures.

RFS: Real-world crypto

This initiative challenges the current crypto landscape by funding engineering teams that tokenize tangible assets like real estate, bank deposits, and actual businesses to grant enforceable ownership rights. Because legal and regulatory hurdles are paramount, the program prioritizes applicants who possess deep legal expertise or have directly collaborated with counsel to ensure compliance. Ultimately, the effort aims to shift the industry from abstract tokens to instruments backed by verified real-world value.

RFS: Commercial open source companies

Y Combinator has invested in over 150 open-source companies, adopting a strategy that leverages technical founders' comparative advantage in communicating directly with engineer users to bypass traditional sales hurdles. This approach accelerates product iteration through immediate community feedback, positioning open-source startups as emerging industry standards within their respective sectors. The organization now explicitly invites technical founders pursuing similar open-source business models to engage with their investment program.

Bring Manufacturing Back to America

In response to a historic decline in U.S. manufacturing, Y Combinator is recruiting a new cohort of founders dedicated to reshoring production through advances in robotics, government incentives, and precedents set by companies like SpaceX and Tesla. This strategic pivot targets a projected decade of Silicon Valley growth in physical goods, building on existing portfolio successes such as satellite manufacturer Astronis and industrial robot producer Gecko Robotics. By explicitly soliciting applications for domestic manufacturing ventures, the accelerator aims to catalyze a revival of the United States as a global leader in physical goods production.

Real vs. Fake progress

The event identifies direct user engagement and continuous product iteration as the highest-leverage activities for founders, explicitly warning against mistaking networking, award-seeking, and conference attendance for genuine progress. It highlights the critical danger of "fake progress" where startups optimize vanity metrics or attend industry events that remain many steps removed from delivering tangible customer value. Consequently, the discussion establishes a strategic imperative to prioritize actual value delivery over superficial growth indicators to ensure long-term startup viability.

Can You Apply to YC Before You Have a US Visa? - Jared Friedman

Jared Friedman

Y Combinator actively admits non-U.S. citizens and provides specific assistance to secure B-1 business visas, which serve as the standard solution for the program's three-to-four-month duration. Historical data confirms that founders lacking U.S. citizenship or existing visas face virtually no barriers to admission, despite their foreign status. Consequently, international entrepreneurs are encouraged to proceed with applications without concern regarding visa eligibility for participation.

Request for Startups: Government 2.0 - Michael Seibel

Michael Seibel

Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel has launched a "Request for Startups" initiative titled "Government 2.0" to identify for-profit ventures using software to solve societal failures that traditional government entities have not resolved. The program specifically targets founders motivated by social impact over mere wealth or scale, aiming to validate Silicon Valley's capacity to drive meaningful community improvements. This effort builds on historical YC successes in sectors like healthcare and criminal justice to demonstrate investor enthusiasm for startups with significant missions.