Latest Interviews
Showing 1–15 of 334 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Y Combinator30 min
New LLMs Are Unlocking Robot-Use Agents
Francois, Hanmei, Vincent, Jay
Frontier researchers and startups like Waddle Labs are advancing a paradigm shift toward general-purpose "robot use agents" that leverage coding-based policies and cross-modal data to perform complex physical tasks without specialized fine-tuning. By applying the "Bitter Lesson" principle to consolidate diverse datasets, these systems utilize in-context learning and memory consolidation architectures to rapidly adapt to new environments, with current demonstrations successfully executing multi-step manipulation challenges. Industry projections indicate that as latency decreases and internal world representations converge, economically viable, general-purpose robots capable of performing competent human-like tasks will emerge within two years.
- Y Combinator1h 0m
Self-Improving Harnesses, Local Personal AI And YC's Agent For Work | YC Paper Club
Seth Karten, Jon Saad-Falcon, Josh France, Regan Bell
YC Harness Club researchers demonstrate that "self-improving harnesses" capable of modifying their own code and memory have driven Arc AGI success rates from 30% to 100%, surpassing standard prompt engineering by leveraging recursive learning architectures. Presentations by Seth and John Sad Falcone detail specific implementations like Prime Agent's multi-tier context management and OpenJarvis's local on-device stack, which collectively achieve frontier-level performance while reducing costs by 800x and enabling autonomous long-horizon research. Furthermore, the QM project establishes a centralized cloud-hosted framework with dynamic sandboxing and fine-grained permissions, addressing critical challenges in system-wide coordination and data security for scalable multi-agent deployment.
- Y Combinator21 min
Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Founders
Paul Graham delivered his 47th Y Combinator batch talk, highlighting a shift toward high-seriousness ventures in logistics and cancer research while defining founder ambition through the "formidable" archetype of those who consistently achieve their goals. Graham analyzed the current AI landscape, noting its uneven "jagged frontier" and the economic reality that token costs now eclipse salaries despite rapid price declines. He concluded that Y Combinator's ecosystem remains vital for peer collaboration and that the next trillion-dollar company will emerge not from a specific idea but from formidable founders capable of adapting to shifting market conditions.
- Y Combinator15 min
The World’s Largest Electric Aircraft Just Flew
Gustaf Alströmer, Anders Forslund, Clara
Heart Aerospace successfully flight-tested the world's largest electric airplane, a 100-foot wingspan aircraft capable of carrying 36 passengers on short-haul routes with minimal operating costs. Led by CEO Anders Forslund and co-founder Clara, the Los Angeles-based team utilized a hybrid configuration to achieve a 500-mile range while significantly reducing maintenance and noise through the replacement of traditional jet engines with electric motors. This clean-sheet design, which marks the first new American airliner in 18 years, aims to replace inefficient regional jets by leveraging existing airport infrastructure and capitalizing on current advancements in battery technology.
- Y Combinator1h 0m
Max Junestrand: You Need The Willingness To Learn Faster Than Anyone Else
Max Junestrand, Gustav Omstrammer
Legora has scaled from three Swedish engineers to over 750 employees, generating $100 million in annual recurring revenue while deploying an agentic AI operating system that now serves three percent of the world's lawyers. Following a strategic pivot after a $35 million funding round revealed revenue lagged behind interest costs, the company shifted focus from growth velocity to product-market fit by freezing sales and transitioning to proactive, autonomous agents. Founded by Max, August, and Sigge, the firm differentiates itself through a high-intensity culture designed to overcome Scandinavian humility, recently securing talent at a 23-year-old salesperson who generated over $10 million without prior industry experience.
- Y Combinator40 min
Michael Kratsios: Inside the White House's AI Strategy
White House OSTP Director Michael Kratos advocates for an AI strategy that prioritizes open-weight models and rejects rigid regulatory thresholds, emphasizing a unified national standard to prevent incumbents from stifling startups. Through the report *A New Golden Age for Science*, the administration proposes shifting federal research funding toward private sector leadership while accelerating scientific breakthroughs via autonomous cloud labs and rapid-grant mechanisms. This approach complements President Trump's executive order on quantum computing and a broader "born free" philosophy that aims to remove barriers for digital technologies while carefully managing specific physical risks.
- Y Combinator15 min
Circleback CEO Ali Haghani: Why Your Company Should Be Recording More Meetings
Circleback, a YC Winter 24 batch company, functions as an AI-driven "company brain" that records, transcribes, and orchestrates team conversations to automatically generate notes and update CRM systems. Founder Ali employs the platform to manage recruitment pipelines and partner relationships while utilizing a specialized workflow that combines AI-generated code with strategic oversight to accelerate product development. The organization is simultaneously establishing rigorous governance protocols for autonomous agents and shifting its operational focus toward high-leverage decision-making as it transitions from manual coding to AI orchestration.
- Y Combinator42 min
Peter Steinberger: What Happens When 4.7 Million People Let It Cook
Launched in November 2024 by a solo developer to solve personal automation needs, the open-source agent project "OpenClaw" rapidly evolved into a viral community initiative that engaged over 18,000 contributors and achieved 4.7 million weekly downloads by mid-2025. Rather than accepting venture capital or acquisition offers, the founder established a 501(c)(3) non-profit status with Nvidia support to maintain independence while addressing security misconceptions and refining the architecture for multimodal voice interactions. The project's trajectory highlights a strategic shift from proprietary models to open-weight alternatives, ultimately serving as a case study on sustaining developer velocity through personal enjoyment and rigorous community governance.
- Y Combinator57 min
Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enough
Max Hodak, CEO of deep-tech startup Science, details the company's solar-powered retinal prosthesis that successfully enabled a patient to read a 300-page novel following major clinical trials. The discussion outlines Science's operational strategy, which includes the proprietary Helix purchasing platform to accelerate hardware procurement and an Eigenreviews performance system utilizing eigenvector centrality for continuous employee evaluation. Hodak further argues that success in brain-computer interfaces relies on high-speed iteration, mission-driven leadership, and building custom internal tools rather than relying on generic enterprise software.
- Y Combinator36 min
The Case For Data Centers In Space
Philip Johnston, Mark Mandelmann
Founded by Philip Johnston in 2024 and backed by a $170 million Series A from Benchmark, StarCloud has emerged as YC's fastest-growing unicorn by pioneering orbital data centers to bypass terrestrial energy constraints. The company successfully launched its first satellite in November 2025, deploying custom-modified GPU hardware and thermal management systems to run AI models like Gemini while utilizing automotive-grade components to mitigate radiation risks. With plans to scale to 88,000 satellites by 2028 and deploy high-bandwidth compute for government and hyperscale customers, StarCloud aims to eventually generate terawatts of processing capacity through partnerships with SpaceX and NVIDIA.
- Y Combinator31 min
Patrick Collison: Is AI Breaking the Lean Startup Playbook?
Patrick Collison shares his journey from dropping out of college twice to launching Stripe, emphasizing the critical role of retaining "cognitive L1 cache" over reliance on AI tools for deep reasoning. He highlights that while new business formation on Stripe has doubled and AI is accelerating revenue milestones, entrepreneurs should remain wary of decentralization fears and instead focus on solving visceral customer problems like legacy payment friction. Collison concludes by advising founders to build fundamental knowledge of first principles and to assess whether their chosen venture is a cause they are willing to pursue for decades.
- Y Combinator32 min
Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity”
Alexander Wang discusses his journey from founding Scale AI to leading Meta's Frontier Lab, where he is developing the Muse Spark model to deliver frontier-level AI capabilities at a fraction of the cost. He argues that the immediate future of the industry will be defined by agentic looping and the orchestration of autonomous agents rather than raw model size, predicting a massive expansion in global GDP driven by these technologies. Wang concludes by advising founders to build independent convictions based on first principles while emphasizing that systematic thinking and vision are becoming the scarce resources in an era of abundant computational intelligence.
- Y Combinator50 min
Blake Scholl: How 50 People Built a Supersonic Jet
Founded by Blake Scholl in 2014, Boom Supersonic successfully developed the XB-1, the first privately built jet to break the sound barrier, using a lean team and software-driven engineering to overcome decades of aviation stagnation. This historic flight directly catalyzed a shift in US federal policy, prompting an Executive Order that legalized supersonic flight over land and clearing the path for the upcoming Overture airliner. By vertically integrating manufacturing and creating revenue through ground-based engines, the company aims to double global travel speeds while eliminating the traditional sonic boom barrier.
- Y Combinator39 min
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"
Sam Altman, Paul Graham, Garry Tan
Sam Altman and Y Combinator highlight an exponential shift in startup capabilities where coding agents reduce development time to mere seconds while hard tech representation in the portfolio surges to 25%. The organization positions itself as a decentralizing force to prevent single-entity control of AI power, explicitly rejecting the "live action role play" mindset in favor of heretical, high-conviction building. Altman warns of safety risks regarding surveillance and model concentration but maintains that widespread founder agency and distributed innovation will ultimately prevent economic collapse or catastrophic safety incidents.
- Y Combinator36 min
Boris Cherny: We Cut 80% of Claude Code’s Prompt
The Opus 5 model release demonstrates a 30% score on the ARC AGI benchmark and unprecedented autonomous endurance by eliminating over 80% of legacy system prompts through an empirical ablation methodology. This shift enabled dynamic workflows where thousands of agents autonomously rewrote complex software stacks like the Bunn runtime and Cloud Code desktop app in mere days. Strategic advice for developers emphasizes replacing rigid prompt engineering with context design and verification protocols to leverage these emergent agentic capabilities effectively.