AI (Artificial Intelligence) Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Scale accelerates the development of AI within organizations of any size to deliver critical business insights and operational efficiency. Its data-centric infrastructure platform leverages RLHF (Reinforced Learning with Human Feedback) to help organizations build the strongest AI models that supercharge their business, with customers across industries including Meta, Microsoft, U.S. Army, DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit, Open AI, General Motors, Toyota Research Institute, Brex, Instacart and Flexport.

Podium is the all-in-one AI-powered lead management and communication platform used by more than 100,000 businesses to acquire and convert new customers. At the forefront of Podium’s innovation is its AI employee, who ensures businesses respond to leads instantly, anytime of the day or night—significantly increasing lead conversion rates and revenue. Podium helps businesses obtain more reviews, rank higher on Google, and consolidate lead channels. Businesses can call and text customers from the web and/or mobile app, send payment links, drive repeat business through bulk messages, and more—all managed and delivered from one easy-to-use dashboard. Additionally, with Podium’s AI Employee and automations, businesses can efficiently handle customer inquiries seamlessly across all communication channels, providing timely and accurate responses that drive sales. Podium’s innovative work has gained recognition on top industry lists, such as Forbes’ Next Billion Dollar Startups, Forbes’ Cloud 100, the Inc. 5000, and Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies. Podium was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Lehi, Utah. It is currently backed by Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator.

Checkr builds people infrastructure for the future of work. And we believe everyone should have a fair chance to work. That's why we've designed a faster—and fairer—way to screen job seekers. For more information on our mission and products, visit https://checkr.com.

Edge AI is inevitable, but shipping it is painful: every device class behaves differently, runtimes vary, models are huge, and performance collapses under memory/power constraints. RunAnywhere turns that into an enterprise-ready workflow: one SDK to run models on-device, plus a control plane to manage models, enforce policies, and measure outcomes across thousands of devices.

Multi-agent systems fail quietly today due to state drift, broken assumptions, and coordination breakdowns. Arzule ingests failed traces from tools like CrewAI, LangChain, AutoGen, and custom stacks, finds coordination failures, and generates a corrected trace with a replayable path for how the workflow should have proceeded. It provides debugging tools, failure detection, and patch plans that can be dropped back into agent workflows to restore forward progress. Arzule also provides labeled multi-agent coordination data that support debugging, benchmarking, evaluation, and the development of more reliable multi-agent systems.

We help teams fine tune and deploy models specialized for their domain and use cases. Generalist, proprietary models like gpt-5 and claude are impressive and have their place but for your most important tasks you need your AI agents to be powered by models that are specialists. Models you own, trained on your data, that can continuously improve for your use cases.

Panta is the autonomous commercial insurance brokerage run by AI agents. Today, businesses wait weeks for coverage because the $1 trillion industry runs on a "human API"—armies of brokers manually bridging the gap with carriers. Instead of chasing email threads and re-keying data, Panta’s clients get results 10x faster because our AI agents automate the entire back-office. Vincent was a Machine Learning Engineer at Google, where he led research on foundation models for recommendation at Vertex AI. Frank was a Senior Full Stack Engineer at Apple and is a top open-source contributor to the Rust and Gleam ecosystems. We realized that while carrier response times are slow, the real bottleneck is the broker. Traditional firms spend 80% of their time on manual data entry, forcing them to scale linearly with headcount. By replacing this work with autonomous agents, we operate with zero data entry and significantly higher margins. We are building a service business with software economics. We formed the company in December and have already bound multiple commercial policies for clients in San Francisco. We aren't just building a better brokerage; we are building the autonomous infrastructure that American business runs on.

We turn existing store security cameras into an AI system that catches shoplifting in real time and alerts staff before thieves leave.

Pax Historia is an alternate-history sandbox game where players choose a country, a moment in time, and rewrite the course of history. What if Rome never fell? What if the Soviet Union survived? What if Genghis Khan ruled for another generation? We go beyond history, too. What if aliens invaded Earth? What if you were a college dropout creating a tech startup? The ability to create, edit, and copy custom maps, actors, historical context, and more means that users can play nearly any scenario they can imagine. In the last four months we've organically built a passionate fanbase of tens of thousands of daily active players and we're excited to expand on this early start. Consider joining us to help build vastly better tools for creators and experiences for players.

ConstellationOS uses environmental and antenna telemetry to predict satellite link failures before they happen. By shifting ground stations from reactive emergency handoffs to proactive scheduling, we eliminate manual overhead and the high cost of data loss for satellite operators.

Mantis provides the foundational infrastructure layer that enables companies to build human-in-computer models. We unify fragmented data sources, simulate human anatomy and physiology, and validate against real-world outcomes. From motion capture and biometric sensors to medical imaging and training logs, our platform transforms disparate data into validated digital twins ready for production applications.

We are building the most accurate and comprehensive real estate data set for RV parks and similar niche asset classes. Travo is the one stop shop for anyone working in real estate to search any property or parcel of land and instantly access rental comps, ownership, zoning and financials. With our data, we build the best informed AI applications for real estate private equity firms, developers, and brokers.

Ressl AI is building AI Agents to disrupt IT Services. Enterprise applications like Salesforce are highly flexible and configurable, allowing them to adapt to the unique processes of different businesses. But implementing and maintaining Salesforce requires specialised Salesforce admins or outsourced consulting firms—both of which are expensive and slow. At Ressl AI, we’re building 10× AI Salesforce Admins. Our agents let IT and RevOps teams configure Salesforce in plain English, accelerating Salesforce delivery by 10× without adding headcount. Our agents can: > Document your Salesforce org > Find root causes of support issues > Perform analysis and dependency mapping > Configure flows and automations > Write Apex code and test classes > Upgrade orgs from legacy versions Before building Ressl, Arushi and Abhishek ran an IT consulting firm for six months, using those learnings to productise RevOps and Salesforce consulting. The global IT outsourcing market is projected to reach ~$600B in 2025. Ressl AI is excited to define what an agentic Accenture looks like.

Oxus is the AI-native platform modernizing internal audits. We turn hours of manual scoping, documentation, and control testing into review-ready outputs generated within minutes. With Oxus, audit teams deliver more audits, faster.

LegalOS is an AI-powered immigration law firm for complex U.S. work visas. Our AI agents generate a USCIS-ready petition package in 24–48 hours, including forms, support letters, and a structured evidence memo. Every case is reviewed and signed by licensed immigration attorneys with 40+ years of experience and a near-100% approval rate, so companies get both speed and reliability. LegalOS already supports O-1, H-1B, L-1A, L-1B, TN, EB-1A, EB-1C, and EB-2 NIW petitions and has a 100% approval rate so far across all visa categories.

Skillsync helps companies find engineers based on their code. It creates structured skill profiles of developers based on their open source contributions on GitHub. Using a Cursor-like interface, companies can search for specific capabilities like "deployed custom neural nets on edge" then qualify, shortlist and engage with engineers already building in their domain.

o11 brings bulge bracket level speed and output quality to capital markets firms of any size. Seamlessly integrated into every Microsoft 365 tool, it transforms your documents and models into a dynamic knowledge layer that drives research, modeling, and client ready deliverables with consistent precision.

Pocket is a tiny AI device that lives on your phone and turns everything you say and hear into clear notes, action items, and search. We combine custom hardware, AI, and software to build the best note-taking experience for people who talk and move fast

Bubble Lab is an open-source Typescript-native workflow automation platform. Unlike tools that use proprietary JSON, you describe a workflow in natural language, and instantly get both a visual flow and fully-typed TypeScript code side-by-side. It offers built-in observability, testability, and scalability out of the box.

Didit is an AI-native, developer-first identity verification platform that makes KYC, AML, and fraud prevention instant, flexible, and transparent, with a seamless user experience and more than 70% lower costs.

Fifth Door unlocks the power of imagination by making it easy for everyone to create, share, and play games anywhere, with anyone. We exist to stimulate the creativity, connection, and joy that people get when they play games.

Avoice brings your studio’s work together on one intelligent platform that automates the parts of practice that drain time from design. It understands your sheets, specs, schedules, materials, codes, and past projects, allowing precise automation across documentation, coordination, QA/QC, and research. Avoice also transforms your firm’s design knowledge and material libraries into a connected and searchable system that preserves standards and elevates consistency. With every document, workflow, and insight in one place, tasks that once took hours now take moments, giving your team more clarity, more momentum, and more room for meaningful architectural work.

Robotics is going to be one of the largest industries the world has ever seen, but right now teams have to build so much in house just to get something to move. Hlabs is making a plug-and-play ecosystem of robotic parts with simple opensource software libraries to reduce the complexity in building a robot. Hlabs is founded by Paul, a second time YC founder who also participated in the W21 batch with Mystic. He ran Mystic as CEO for 6 years. From the first launch in October 2025 over 40 robotics companies have placed orders for the actuator control product. Hlabs is targeting Q1 '26 for the release of several additional plug-and-play products including an Nvidia Jetson powered main board, a low cost expandable camera system, and wireless communication/video module to make every robot wireless out of the box.

We’re building the financial OS for a trillion dollar vertical. Banking + intelligence + automation -- custom-built for real estate owners & operators.

AtlasGrid automatically builds a visual graph of your mobile app UI and displays analytics directly on your screens. Additionally, our fleet of AI-powered agents will continuously analyze thousands of mobile apps, gathering design insights and identifying growth opportunities + actionable product improvements.

Enterprises are racing to adopt AI, but often don't have the right controls in place or know how to verify vendors are compliant. LogosGuard turns AI policies into executable controls, stress-tests your AI products, and continuously monitors changes, giving enterprises the confidence to scale AI responsibly.

F2 is the AI platform for private markets investors. Purpose-built for private credit, private equity, and commercial banking, F2 accelerates diligence, underwriting, and portfolio monitoring, helping teams evaluate deals over 60% faster. F2 turns unstructured deal data into investment-grade analysis and polished memos in minutes. Unlike general-purpose AI, F2 is built with the domain expertise and depth to handle the most complex financial analysis. Already trusted across thousands of deals, F2 makes collaboration easy and retains historical context, so past work compounds into future wins. Headquartered in New York City, F2 is backed by leading investors including NFX, Left Lane Capital, and Y Combinator.

We’re building AI agents that speed up drug trials by automating the manual consolidation and document prep required for every IND submission. Today, biotechs spend months stitching together reports from contractors and internal teams just to file and get to their first-in-human trial.

Exonic is building a global network of intelligence to cure disease. We are the first drug discovery company open to everyone. Today drug discovery is siloed - secretive, adversarial institutions in glass towers. Biological AI is changing the rules. Every day drug discovery becomes more of a computational problem. Exonic is turning drug discovery into an open, meritocratic tournament. We are advised by world leaders in bio AI, including the former Head of AI at Ginkgo Bioworks, and the first author of Evo (cover of Science). All of the best biological AI models are open source. And on Exonic, you can combine them, prompt them, and share your innovative workflows without writing a single line of code. Using Exonic Studio, we just beat a state-of-the-art benchmark in liver cancer (HepG2) synthetic enhancer design, validated in our wet lab. The platform just went live - you can start right now. We are turning the internet into a drug discovery powerhouse.

Thesis is building the engine for discovery. Our aim is to help uncover the next AlphaFold or build the next Transformer, faster, more systematically, and at scale. We treat discovery not as a matter of luck, but as an engineering challenge to be solved. Thesis lets anyone build powerful machine learning models for anything they can imagine. The mission is to democratize invention by putting machine intelligence in everyone’s hands. Every major breakthrough in the next decade, in science, industry, or AI, will be built on systems like Thesis. We intend to define that category.

Castari lets developers deploy AI agents in secure, autoscaling sandboxes with one command. We handle tool/MCP connectors, snapshots, and observability so teams go from prototype to production in hours instead of weeks. Developers focus on building agents, Castari provides the autoscaling sandbox infrastructure to ensure your agents and its tools are secure.

Zarna is private equity’s first AI associate class. Our agents plug directly into your firm’s data and work like a deal team that never sleeps. Zarna’s agents analyze CIMs, build LBOs, update CRMs, draft IC memos, & act based on decades of proprietary firm knowledge. The result: investors spend less time buried in decks and spreadsheets, and more time on judgment, relationships, and winning deals.

Nessie is building personal AI brains that augment human cognition. Nessie turns your scattered AI conversations and documents into a shareable AI brain you actually own. It's a thinking partner that lets you instantly search your entire history of ideas, synthesize them into new insights, and watch your knowledge build on itself over time. Right now, your best thinking is trapped in ephemeral AI chat histories. Nessie unifies your context from ChatGPT, Claude, and (soon) Apple Notes/Google Docs/Notion/other context sources, auto-organizing the mess into an AI-enhanced brain. Next, we are unlocking sharing. Instead of sending a static doc, you will be able to send your "Product Strategy Brain" to a cofounder, or publish your "Research Brain" for your entire team to chat with. Who it's for: AI-native thinkers—founders, researchers, and writers—who believe their best ideas should compound. The Team: We are two Yale CS grads and former Amazon engineers building the tool we needed for ourselves. We combine Anna's obsession with neuroscience and augmenting human cognition with Tiger's lifelong passion for building products (he shipped an app with 70k+ users at age 13). Traction: Launched 3 weeks ago. We have over 1,200 users who have imported 300,000+ AI conversations into Nessie. 30% week-over-week organic user growth. Origin Story: Nessie was born after we hit the 1-million-token limit in multiple Gemini chats. Overnight, months of research disappeared. We realized the problem wasn't just about storage; it was that the medium for AI-native thought didn't exist yet. The chat window is a place to ask questions, not a place to build a mind. Our Vision: We are building a new medium for personal intelligence. Everyone will have an AI brain on Nessie. You will use it to think better, remember more, and share your mind with the world.

DiligenceSquared delivers AI-powered market due diligence for investment decisions - like the $500k McKinsey reports, but automated, auditable, and at a fraction of the cost. When Private Equity funds evaluate deals, they pay firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Bain $500K-$1M for market due diligence. The process takes weeks, and the output is a static PowerPoint that's impossible to audit. A single large-cap PE fund can spend >$30M annually on this and the total market is $10B per year. Our AI agents conduct expert interviews and synthesize insights with every claim linked to source transcripts. No black box, no "trust me" slides, and no 10x mark-up for human labor. Frederik bought these reports as a Principal at Blackstone. Soren sold them as a Principal at BCG. Harshil is a repeat founder and former Software Engineer at Google. We've seen both sides and know what matters in due diligence - and now we automate it. Our clients already include 8 leading private equity funds with over $2.4 trillion in combined AUM.

Jarmin.ai is your 24/7 ML eng employee that you hire. Just talk to Jarmin like any other employee and Jarmin handles your AI/ML work from there. Completely hand over full initiatives or individual tasks. Jarmin’s founding team is from Meta SuperIntelligence Labs (Staff Engineers), Apple (Machine Learning Engineer), AWS (scaling infra), Lockheed-Martin (Research), and JPMorganChase (SWE) with experience building AI/ML and automating complex work of Researchers, Data Scientists, ML Engineers with AI.

Sanctum lets you launch new features to agents that mimic your real users. We build AI user models from your session recordings and run them against your changes to surface bugs, UX issues, and performance problems early.

Hireglide is an AI screening tool for hiring teams. Instead of wading through 500 CVs, we screen them and surface the best candidates. In future, with access to millions of CVs, we will match candidates with relevant roles.

Efference builds the eyes and visual cortex for robots. Instead of treating depth as a hardware problem, we use software — inspired by how humans see — to generate rich and reliable 3D information. This lets us deliver higher performance and greater ease of use at a lower price than existing stereo cameras.

Inspector helps front-end engineers ship faster with AI by automating the most frustrating part of the job — gathering context between the browser and the codebase. Inspector is an AI IDE for front-end that connects your browser and codebase. Inspector lets you select elements visually and prompt changes, giving coding agents access to the same runtime context developers have: visuals, elements, and logs. With Inspector, you’re editing right in the front-end, not buried under tabs and screenshots.

Social networks are dead. Social media became more media than social. My friends aren't on social media anymore - it's one third ads, one third content from strangers, and one third AI slop. Our social lives are fragmented across dozens of different apps - iMessage, WhatsApp, Find My, Partiful, and Venmo. Digipals is the first AI-native social operating system that improves our relationships with friends. We built ambient AI agents that use social context from our location, calendar, and photos to take action and write code in our group chats. We are the last social platform anyone will ever need. Launch Video https://youtu.be/KW2tjLl6sxM

Scott AI is the agentic workspace where teams align on spec before any codegen runs. Teams already use multiple coding agents to build. Different coding agents will continue to evolve and have diverse strengths. An engineer will entrust a long-running agent to add dark-mode end-to-end while they pair carefully with an IDE-based agent to land a critical DB migration. These execution agents cannot be the decision layer because they are biased to their own tool, they are not neutral. Scott AI is the neutral, agent agnostic decision layer for the age of multi agent building. Teams will use Scott as their decision workspace to finally ditch google docs and notion as their primary spec alignment layer.

If you are a trusts & estates attorney, RIA, fintech, or family office interested in Sava, reach us at founders@savahq.com

Sylvian helps companies build specialized AI agents.

Anto is building a foundation model for microbial communities, making the gut microbiome computable for the first time. We predict drug toxicity and efficacy across diverse populations and fix drugs so they work for everyone — solving the hidden root cause of most drug failures. Founded by Arvid (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Nature-published researcher who pioneered quality-aware, goal-directed sparsification) and David (Harvard Medical School Gastroenterology, J&J), second-time founders who published the breakthrough at leading machine learning AI conferences and Nature.

Norra helps nursing facilities manage equipment operations. Every year, ~$80 billion are spent on medical equipment like beds, concentrators, and wheelchairs. Nursing facilities continue to operate with zero visibility which leads to $15 billion in equipment waste annually. We use physical trackers and AI agents to eliminate this.

Lemma enables AI agents to continuously improve from user feedback and production outcomes. Instead of relying on manual prompt tuning and reactive debugging, Lemma detects when an agent’s performance drifts, pinpoints the exact step causing failures, generates optimized prompt candidates, and automatically delivers improvements through our API or by opening a pull request in your codebase. Built by ex-AI engineers who felt this pain firsthand, Lemma turns static agents into self-improving systems, helping teams ship reliable AI products faster with compounding performance gains over time. Deploy 1x. Learn forever.

Rovr streamlines engineering operations by automating intake, triage, routing, and cross-team coordination. It replaces internal forms, manual Slack triage, and scattered docs with an AI front desk that understands requests, assigns owners, updates context, and posts status changes directly into Slack. Rovr’s built-in ops CRM gives teams a single system of record for eng requests — from tooling access to platform incidents to dev-infra workflows — reducing operational drag across the entire org.

Logical is a desktop AI that acts as a proactive and largely promptless copilot, designed to reduce the friction of using AI for everyday tasks. It transfers context across apps, and allows taking action on many apps with just a few clicks. Logical can assist with drafting emails, writing docs, noting meetings and can even automatically detect action items. Need to prompt? Logical can understand intent in much fewer words than a regular chatbot. Plus, user data is never sent to Logical servers. Logical is the AI resurrection of Clippy, but actually good.