#Y Combinator
50 articles with this tag
Self-Improving Harnesses Push ARC-AGI to 95.5%
YC Paper Club put harnesses center stage: Prime Agent, OpenJarvis and QM show how self-improving scaffolding beats fixed prompts.
Ollama open models cost collapse is real
Ollama CEO says AT&T moved 40% of tokens to open models as Chinese flash models and coding agents drive 150x growth.
World's Largest Electric Aircraft Flies on $5 Charge
Hart Aerospace flew a 25,000 lb, 100-foot electric demonstrator for $5 in power, prepping a 30-seat hybrid ES30.
The Signal Layer Is the New Moat
When AI makes building free, Lena Hall says value moves from shipping speed to the signal layer: choosing what to build and emitting it without distortion.
ChatGPT Work Puts Slack and Gmail on Phone
ChatGPT Work brings Slack, Gmail and finance triage to your phone via dictation, plus Remote access to your laptop.
Uber's uReview Rebuilds Automated Code Review
Uber's uReview now posts 25,000 AI code review comments weekly, cutting costs 60% while triaging a review bottleneck that tripled to 9 hours.
Recursive Self-Improvement AI Warning Grows
Roman Yampolskiy warns recursive self-improvement is 1-2 years away and control has already failed in lab tests, including Claude's blackmail behavior.
Legora's YC Rejection to $100M ARR: A Startup Story
Legora's co-founder & CEO, Max Junestrand, shares the startup's incredible journey from YC rejection to $100M ARR, fueled by AI and a winning culture.
Claude's Corner: Congruent - Radar for the End-to-End Autonomy Era
Congruent builds the only radar hardware designed for end-to-end neural network training, paired with a world-model simulator that generates synthetic raw radar returns. Every AV team knows this gap. Nobody else has closed it.
White House AI Strategy: Kratsios on Policy & Innovation
Michael Kratsios, White House OSTP Director, discusses US AI strategy, open-source models, and the future of science at a YC event.
Robinhood Ventures Lists
Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII) priced its IPO at $25.00 per share, aiming to offer retail investors access to early-stage private companies.
Y Combinator CEO on AI, Founder Psychology
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan discusses founder psychology, the evolution of Silicon Valley culture, and the future of AI in shaping startups and work.
Circleback CEO: Recording Meetings Will Be the Norm
CircleBack CEO Ali Haghani discusses his AI note-taking platform, its use in candidate tracking, and the future of meeting recording in the age of AI.
Claude's Corner: /dev/fast - The AI Code Forge That Remembers Your Codebase
AI coding tools made individual engineers 3x faster at writing code. The side effect nobody planned for: PR review time up 441%. /dev/fast is a YC W2026 team building an AI-native code forge that actually understands your codebase - because it stores its knowledge in git alongside your code.
Paper's Steven Haney on AI-Native Design Tools
Paper founder Steven Haney discusses how AI-native design tools are changing the creative workflow, emphasizing human-AI collaboration and seamless design-to-code handoffs.
Garry Tan on Personal AGI and Spinoza
Garry Tan argues that Personal AGI is here, diffused as agents, and urges founders to build their own infrastructure, drawing lessons from Spinoza's resilience.
Robinhood Opens Private Markets to Retail
Robinhood launches RVII, a publicly traded fund offering retail investors early access to private startups, primarily from Y Combinator.
YC QM Agent Harness: A Collaborative AI Shift
Y Combinator's new open-source QM project introduces a multiplayer agent harness for startups, focusing on collaborative AI with isolated workspaces and flexible model integration.
How Together AI Solves LLM Cold Starts
Together AI details native metrics and cold start benchmarks to fix nonlinear latency degradation in LLM autoscaling.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Startup School 2026 that "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup," citing AI advancements and the need for ambitious founders.
Jensen Huang: NVIDIA's Journey From Wrong Tech to AI Breakthroughs
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang shares insights on overcoming early tech missteps, learning from textbooks, and the power of systems thinking in building AI breakthroughs.
AI's Cost, Community, and the Future of Startups
YC partners discuss AI costs, community building, startup durability, and the future of VC funding.
OpenCode CEO on 20x Growth & AI Agent Market
OpenCode CEO Jay V reveals how the platform achieved 20x growth, reaching 4.6M users by supporting any AI model and becoming a key player in the global coding agent market.
PhotoRoom Founders: How to Dream Bigger
PhotoRoom's co-founders Eliot Andres and Matthieu Rouif discuss how focus, ambition, and mindset shifts, often influenced by programs like Y Combinator, propelled their company's massive growth.
PostHog's James Hawkins on AI-Native Software
PostHog co-CEO James Hawkins details the company's shift to AI-native self-driving software, emphasizing ambition and the iterative process of building autonomous solutions.
World Models: The Key to AGI?
Ankit Gupta and Francois Chaubard of Y Combinator discuss world models as a key to solving AI's sample efficiency problem and potentially unlocking AGI.
Eve Bouffard on Imagination Engineering at YC
Eve Bouffard of Y Combinator introduces 'Imagination Engineering,' a framework for creating products users may not yet know they need.
David Lieb on Understanding User Behavior with Dot Plots
David Lieb from Y Combinator explains how dot plots offer deeper insights into user behavior than aggregate metrics alone.
Startup School: Max Kolysh on Landing First 10 Customers
Max Kolysh of Y Combinator shares essential strategies for startups to land their first 10 customers, emphasizing personal networks, understanding customer behavior, and targeted outreach.
Jon Xu on Picking Startup Ideas
Jon Xu of Y Combinator shares insights on picking startup ideas, emphasizing customer feedback, deep dives, and the importance of commitment over perfection.
Legora CEO on AI in Legal Tech
Legora CEO Max Junestrand discusses the unique marketing challenges for legal tech and how their AI platform is revolutionizing document analysis and efficiency for law firms.
Building AI Services Companies: A Playbook
Charlie Warren of Y Combinator shares a playbook for building AI-native services companies, emphasizing domain fluency, operational rigor, and value-based pricing.
IIT Engineers Reject $550K Jobs for Startup
IIT engineers Varun Vummadi and his co-founder left high-paying jobs to build Giga, an AI company revolutionizing customer support. Learn about their journey.
YC Paper Club: Inference, Diffusion, World Models
YC Paper Club event featuring discussions on AI inference, diffusion models, and world models, with insights from Francois Chaubard and Tanishq Kumar.
Y Combinator Partners on Building Superintelligence
Y Combinator partners Diana Hu, Harj Taggar, Pete Koomen, Garry Tan, and Jared Friedman discuss how companies can build superintelligence by integrating AI into their operations and culture.
Why Good Companies Go Bad: Ries on Incorruptibility
Eric Ries discusses why good companies go bad and how founders can build mission-driven organizations that last.
AI-Native Companies: Building Self-Improving Organizations
Tom Blomfield of Y Combinator discusses building AI-native companies, emphasizing self-improving AI loops and the shift from productivity to capability.
Paul Graham on Silicon Valley vs. Stockholm for Startups
Paul Graham, Y Combinator founder, discusses the benefits of Silicon Valley for startups and how Stockholm can foster its own thriving hub.
Claude's Corner: Librar Labs, The AI Librarian That's Really a Data-Catalog Trojan Horse
Librar Labs looks like another YC W2026 SaaS, AI-powered school library management, until you look at the team and the technical claim under the hood. OpenAI / Scale / Palantir alums plus quantum physicists plus a 'self-healing database for unstructured data' don't build a school librarian assistant unless the school librarian is the wedge.
Y Combinator Decodes AI: Recursive Reasoning Models
Y Combinator Decoded explores how recursive AI models, like HRM and TRM, are revolutionizing AI reasoning by mimicking the human brain's efficiency.
Claude's Corner: Inviscid AI, Real-Time CFD for Data Centers Is Suddenly Plausible
Inviscid AI (YC W2026) builds physics-informed neural networks for real-time CFD on data centers and buildings. 240x faster than traditional CFD, 40% airflow improvement. The technical bet on PINNs, the moats, and what could kill them.
Replit's Agent 4: AI Building Apps Without Code
Replit CEO Amjad Massad introduces Agent 4, an AI app builder that transforms ideas into functional software with natural language prompts.
Build AI-Native Companies with Closed-Loop Systems
Diana Hu of Y Combinator shares insights on building AI-native companies, emphasizing closed-loop systems, intelligence layers, and the power of AI agents.
Garry Tan on Building with AI Agents
Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, discusses the emerging era of AI agents in software development, showcasing his G stack tool and the 'conductor pattern' for efficient, AI-assisted development.
Claude's Corner: General Legal, The AI-Native Law Firm That's Not a Copilot, It's the Lawyer
General Legal (YC W2026) is an AI-native law firm built by the Casetext team. $500 flat-fee contracts, sub-hour turnaround, delivered via Slack. Here is the technical architecture, the moat analysis, and why this model is a template for every professional services vertical.
Claude's Corner: Pocket, The AI Hardware Startup That Quietly Hit $27M ARR
Claude's Corner attempts to rebuild Pocket. In this edition, Pocket, the $27M ARR AI hardware startup from YC W26, turns every conversation you have into transcripts, summaries, and action items with a tiny clip-on device. Claude Code has mapped out 7 steps to reproduce this YC startup of batch W2026. Find the repo code at the end of the article to replicate. As always, get building...
Claude's Corner: Sponge, Financial Rails for AI Agents That Spend Money on Their Own
Claude's Corner attempts to rebuild Sponge. In this edition, Sponge gives AI agents their own wallets and payment rails so they can buy API access, data feeds, and SaaS tools without a human handing over a credit card. Claude Code has mapped out 7 steps to reproduce this YC W2026 startup. Find the repo code at the end of the article to replicate. As always, get building...
Claude's Corner: Hex Security, AI Agents That Hack Before Attackers Do
Claude's Corner attempts to rebuild Hex Security. In this edition, Hex Security deploys AI agents that run continuous penetration tests 24/7, replacing the expensive, once-a-year manual pentest. Claude Code has mapped out 7 steps to reproduce this YC W2026 startup. Find the repo code at the end of the article to replicate. As always, get building...
Claude's Corner: Delve, The $300M Compliance Startup That Allegedly Faked the Compliance
Claude's Corner attempts to rebuild Delve. In this edition, Delve built AI agents to automate compliance certification (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR), raised $32M at a $300M valuation, grew to 500+ customers, then got dropped by Y Combinator in April 2026 after allegations of fake evidence and open-source IP theft. Claude Code has mapped out 7 steps to reproduce the legitimate core of this product. Find the repo code at the end of the article to replicate. As always, get building...
Claude's Corner: Terminal Use, Vercel for Background AI Agents
Claude's Corner attempts to rebuild Terminal Use. In this edition, Terminal Use provides Vercel-style infrastructure for hosting filesystem-based AI coding agents. Claude Code has mapped out 7 steps to reproduce this YC W26 startup. Find the repo code at the end of the article to replicate. As always, get building...