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

Ignition is an AI-native employee benefits brokerage for companies with under 200 employees. Health insurance is one of the largest line items these companies carry, and employers absorb 15 to 40% rate increases year after year without ever seeing their own numbers. We have rebuilt the sales and back office to be AI-first. This market represents about $500B of market cap, and those businesses have not fundamentally changed in over 50 years. While scaling Plated, I wore every HR hat from doing payroll myself, to managing a PEO, to eventually hiring an employee benefits broker on our way to 1,500 employees. We wasted over $4M on benefits over 5 years, and I'm building Ignition to help companies under 200 employees avoid making my mistakes.

Grocalo (S26) is an AI brain that runs content for creators. We understand their audiences, using video understanding and deep platform analytics to bottle up the taste behind each creator and personalize and distribute content to creator specific audiences. Grocalo generated 2B views and gained 4M followers for our creators in the last 2 months. Some of our clients include Jimmy O. Yang (Comedian, 11M followers), King Bach (72M followers), Leenda Dong (28M followers), Steven He (30M followers), Sheena Melwani (18M followers), and Jeannie Mai (TV host, 6M followers). Content should be personalized and data-driven. We’ve developed the most advanced AI brain replicating viral content for any given audience.

We build human foundation models. Our first family of models powers lifelike avatars that interact with users in real time, enabling AI agents and applications to go beyond text and voice with just a few lines of code. State-of-the-art realism with ultra-low latency at scale.

Flick is an AI filmmaking software that lets people create Hollywood-level short films completely using AI end-to-end. There are many AI tools that can give you 8-second casual clips to post on social media, but when it comes to creating truly high-quality films with coherent storylines, consistent characters, and cinematic aesthetics, they don’t come close due to their lack of flexibility, creative control, and fragmented creative flow. Founded by an award-winning filmmaker and a founding engineer at Instagram, Flick defines an interface specifically designed for native AI filmmaking that feels natural and enables end-to-end creative flows. Think of Flick as Figma for AI filmmaking. There are 4 complete AI short films created using Flick that got 20+ awards in international film festivals already and our early creator residency community are generating several AI short films every week. We are also building a community where we produce our own AI films as well as collaborating with other well-known filmmakers to share their “behind-the-scenes” workflows as resuable templates to inspire users in our community. We not only build product, we also build world-class content. The whole film industry will be revolutionized by AI and our goal is to be “the product” that defines this category.

Relaw powers leading AI-native law firms.

PARES is an AI-native real estate services firm, providing investment sales brokerage and property management to institutional and middle-market property owners and investors across the country. Real estate is an extremely labor-intensive business, often requiring scaling headcount to grow, being extremely local to submarkets, and operating on low margins. With AI, these services can be centralized and delivered better, faster, and at a fraction of the cost. AI-native brokerage: - Prospecting sellers through automated inbound and outbound outreach - Underwriting deals and producing marketing materials with speed and precision - Surfacing hidden buyers, running the marketing process, and negotiating contracts - Handling all back-office, accounting, and additional support AI-native property management: - Communicating with tenants and vendors around the clock - Screening leasing prospects, sending applications, and drafting leases - Collecting rents, making payments, and chasing delinquencies - Running accounting, payroll, and owner reporting Check us out at https://www.pares.ai/

MindFort is building fully autonomous AI agents powered by their in-house models that can find, exploit, and patch complex vulnerabilities in web applications at massive scale. MindFort agents use the same principles as human penetration testers to understand their target and figure out the best ways to work together to exploit it. We can do fully autonomous AI web pentesting and bring offensive security to teams out numbered. While security teams were already behind with legacy tools and processes, AI coding is make the problem worse. AI generates code far faster than human teams can secure it; MindFort can match that speed and scale. Our agents will become critical as organizations scale up development with AI.

Wavedash uses cutting edge browser technology to let gamers play the latest releases with no downloads or installation.

General Trajectory is using AI to solve the world's most important problems, from autonomous defense to scientific R&D.

Endstack is a full desktop, collaborative workspace built for humans and agents running in the cloud available on web, desktop, and mobile. Each workspace powered by endOS, giving you a familiar channel-based experience augmented by a real desktop environment. The desktop is backed by Linux and ships with a built-in Chrome browser. Files, notes, browser tabs, native apps, terminal, and all your agents in a single beautiful, unified interface. At the center of it all you get a powerful agent running 24/7 that you can also reach via Slack, email, or SMS.

https://streamable.run

Voker is the Agent Analytics Platform for monitoring and improving your AI agents. Companies like Dutch.com use our SDK to build better agents. Alex and Tyler met at a high-growth E-Commerce startup where Tyler was running Technology & Data. Together, they built AI products that bootstrapped the company profitably to $100MM in Revenue.

Merlin is an AI-powered ERP for construction companies. We provide construction companies with a single, AI-powered platform to manage their entire business operations. Our platform unifies project management, materials management, finance, estimating, and CRM—traditionally scattered across multiple systems—into one cohesive solution. For the first time, construction firms can automate and oversee every aspect of their projects in a single, intuitive system. Today, construction companies pay for 8-17 different tools - that we eliminate the need for. We reduce - Manual work by 60% - Cut software costs by $10,000 monthly - Complete projects 3x faster. Why Now? We're witnessing a perfect storm of factors: decades of stagnation in traditional ERP systems, a multi-billion-dollar industry built on misaligned incentives, and the transformative potential of AI. This confluence creates a rare cyclical opportunity for market upheaval. The last major shift in this space occurred in the 1990s with the advent of digital systems, and now, 30 years later, we're on the cusp of another seismic change. Customers are crying out for innovation and as AI reshapes the landscape, early customer signals indicate an eagerness for smarter, more efficient systems. It's a unique window of opportunity that opens perhaps once in a multi-decade chance to redefine an entire industry's operational backbone. Team: KS, a BITS Pilani grad and successful startup co-founder, and Ayantika, an IIT alumni and tech expert, bring extensive coding and product development expertise together bringing about over a decade of technical expertise. Sneha ( that’s me), with over a decade of experience in supply chain management and lean manufacturing within the construction industry, has lived the pain of using ERPs in this industry.

Superunit deploys AI voice and email agents to complete employment verifications for background check companies—faster, cheaper, and more compliant than internal teams or outsourced call centers. Our agents call and email employers, collect verification data, and log every interaction for audit and compliance. Customers are replacing manual workflows with Superunit to scale without adding headcount or compromising quality. We work with background screeners and banks to process thousands of verifications per month.

Yondu is creating the robotic workforce of the future starting with logistics automation. We're deploying humanoid robots in the first flexible, drop-in picking automation solution designed for 3PLs.

You closed your first few deals on handshakes and Stripe links. Now a customer wants a ramp-up, custom terms, or annual billing — and suddenly you're duct-taping spreadsheets to your CRM. Most CPQ tools are built for 500-person sales orgs with a dedicated RevOps team. Veles is built for you. AI agents handle quoting, approvals, and deal docs end-to-end so you can run a real sales motion without hiring a deal desk. It's free for founders just getting started, and pricing scales with the number of active contracts you manage — so we only grow when you do. No CRM consultant, no six-month rollout. Just connect Salesforce or HubSpot and start closing.

Constructable is the modern alternative to Procore, Autodesk, and Fieldwire. We help mid-size general contractors manage the entire lifecycle of a commercial project from bidding to closeout. With Constructable, teams can accelerate field, project, and financial management in one intuitive system. RFIs, submittals, drawings, daily logs, punch lists, change orders—everything lives in one place, with AI-powered search to find answers instantly. GCs and builders across the U.S. and Canada are already running smoother projects on Constructable. Learn more at constructable.ai

CoAsync by Cognitio Labs is the AI back office for product quality compliance teams. We help mission-critical food manufacturers automate repetitive, document-intensive workflows. We started with Certificates of Analysis (COAs), one of the many workflows quality teams manage before products can ship. Today, this work is still performed manually across PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected ERP systems. Other documents we help quality teams respond to 24x7 include supplier audit questionnaires, production schedules, lab reports & changes in product specifications and quality records. CoAsync automates the workflow by: Reading supplier documents Extracting laboratory data Validating product specifications Applying compliance requirements Drafting compliant COAs Organizing audit-ready documentation Results from one of our initial deployments with a mid-market food processor: 85% less QA administrative work 4× more COAs processed per shift 1-2 hours saved per document New product onboarding in under one day COAs are just the beginning. Our vision is to build the AI back office for product quality and compliance across regulated industries by automating the many document-intensive workflows manufacturers manage every day. Backed by Y Combinator and leading investors. Founder Diva Avaya Sharma has presented example AI workflows for product quality and compliance through the World Economic Forum Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains' SmartStart initiative and at the International Telecommunication Union's AI for Good Global Summit, organized in partnership with the United Nations. Know a company shipping food & product urgently? Help them get started with their own document workflows at https://cognitioiq.com

Opensteer creates specialized AI agents in cloud computers that can integrate with anything. Each agent gets customizable browser access, tools, instructions, and guardrails, so it can work 24/7 exactly the way you need.

Scanbase makes it easy for medical companies to convert photos of rapid diagnostic tests into results. We do this by providing a simple API that any medical company can access.

AnythingLLM is an all-in-one desktop, mobile, and open-source on-device AI application that makes local AI practically useful for the everyday person. AnythingLLM (56K stars) (https://github.com/Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm)

GoodFin is reimagining private wealth in the era of AI. Our mission is to empower a new generation to build wealth, starting with their investments in alternative assets. Our AI-native platform combines a design-forward experience with a backend powered by a system of intelligent agents. We are building a future where AI unlocks financial hyperpersonalization, automation and optimization for sophisticated financial products, which are typically gated by advisors and reserved for very wealthy clients. This highly fragmented $1.25T global services market will undergo a sea change in the coming years, as trillions pass in the largest intergenerational wealth transfer to date. In a world where most financial decisions will become automated, we believe the next category-defining wealth company will still be human-driven at its core – powered by a high-value community like our membership base of professionals, founders and investors. The next generation financial giant will be an AI-native platform that makes wealth creation seamless, personalized, and social. That’s what we’re building.

At Serif Health, we are taking the complexity out of the cost of healthcare. Our mission is to make healthcare pricing and contracting more transparent, easier to understand, fairer, and ultimately more affordable for all. New price transparency regulations have made a wealth of healthcare pricing and reimbursement data publicly available for the first time, but it is still extremely hard to ingest, organize, and actually use this data to understand the cost of care. That’s where we come in. Serif Health is building healthcare price intelligence data products and APIs to power the future of more transparent healthcare. We are an early-stage, venture-backed startup with a small, collaborative team of healthcare experts, engineers, and designers. We are excited to add new team members motivated by our mission, passionate about making a difference in healthcare, and looking forward to learning and growing from the challenges we will face along the way!

Impossible mining is building underwater robotics vehicles which collect battery metals from the seabed without harming the environment. We have $500M+ in off-take LoI’s and have signed a partnership with a global offshore logistics company which holds a seabed mining exploration permit. We have also built the 1st PoC underwater robotic arm. Polymetallic nodules are rocks which are rich in critical battery metals. Specially nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper. These metals are the the most expensive part of EVs.

MarqVision’s mission is to protect and build a future shaped by original ideas, innovations, and creativity. As a leading online brand protection solution, we help global brands identify and remove counterfeits and combat piracy from over 1,500 platforms and thousands of rogue websites in over 118 countries. In a time when counterfeiting poses an increasingly serious challenge, we believe that democratizing legal expertise and access to the latest in generative AI technology is critical for continuing to support the inventors, developers, and artists of the world who work tirelessly to deliver safe, high-quality products. MarqVision’s technology powers everything from detection, monitoring, and even enforcement to protect brands at scale. Founded in 2020 by Harvard Law graduates, MarqVision is proudly backed by Altos Ventures, DST Global Partners, Softbank, Atinum Investments and Y Combinator. Our commitment to innovation has also been recognized with a prestigious 2022 Innovation Award from LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH), and we are honored to be part of the LVMH accelerator program, La Maison des Startups, at the Station F incubator. As we bring forth the next evolution of brand protection, we invite businesses everywhere to join us in safeguarding the creativity that drives our world.

Compose AI is a free Chrome extension that helps automate your writing using AI. You know how Gmail autocompletes your emails? Compose.ai is like that but everywhere, like how Grammarly works.

LFcarry (formerly LegionFarm) is the world's top AI-powered marketplace for gamers to hire elite pros (top 1%) for coaching, carry, boosting and pro analytics in AAA games like WoW: Forever, Destiny 2, Call of Duty, GTA 6, Apex Legends and 40+ other games. Founded in 2016, YC-backed (W20) with $17.8M raised from 20+ investors, we've served 250k+ users via two web platforms and five messenger bots, creating 10k+ jobs for Pros worldwide. Current services include WoW Forever, WoW Forever power leveling and Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders. Customers can browse options and pricing on LFCarry before coordinating with a professional player. In Q2 2026 we've launched a specialized gaming SEO/page building AI tool that is operating on pro analytics training data and autonomous AI research&engineering loops available at https://lfcarry.com/guides and it became the fastest growing product marketing case in video games so far, recording a 60x+ organic monthly impressions growth with 2.5M weekly impressions across gaming guides, tier lists, weekly activities and game time planning in major AAA games. At the same time we have all operations automated for coaching, carry and boosting services that our customers can purchase from Pros at our marketplace at https://lfcarry.com/

Sapling offers an API and SDK to help businesses integrate language models into their applications. Its messaging assistant sits on top of CRMs and messaging platforms to help users more efficiently compose responses.

At Zeitview, our goal is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. We do this by combining advanced inspection software with the ability to capture visual data in more than 60 countries. This allows us to deliver safer, faster, lower-cost inspections of energy and infrastructure assets with a high degree of accuracy and repeatability. We use artificial intelligence and machine learning to ingest and analyze vast amounts of visual data to provide objective insights that our customers can act on immediately.

For the first time in history, technology exists to create a healthcare system that anticipates your needs, responds with precision and is accessible to everyone -- regardless of financial means or geography. Since 2015, Akido Labs singular focus has been to make this vision a reality.

MixerBox is an AI Super-Apps technology company that helps people live easier through its 24/7 daily-essential mobile apps platform. Founded in 2012 by Harvard alumnus John Lai, MixerBox is backed by the Silicon Valley unicorn accelerator Y Combinator. The company’s apps have surpassed 300,000,000 downloads worldwide, and allow MixerBox users to wake up to MixerBox AlarmTunes, read MixerBox NewsDash, browse with MixerBox ChatAI Browser, pay with MixerBox AI Pay, watch MixerBox FreecableTV, and fall asleep with MixerBox Inspire Meditation. App by app, MixerBox strives to become the “Anything, Anytime Super-Apps Platform” to help people live easier.

Emerge is a suite of developer tools designed to supercharge mobile apps and the teams that build them. Our tooling is already used by many of the best mobile teams in the world like DoorDash, Square, Airbnb, Duolingo, Stripe, among others. Come help us make it even better!

*S19 and YCG F21* Engineering teams shouldn’t be in the dark when it comes to the performance of their web and mobile apps and user experiences. With our industry-leading observability technology, Embrace aims to give SRE and DevOps teams better insight into what matters most – their users – by tying performance data to backend observability insights. As the only user-focused, use-focused observability solution built on OpenTelemetry, Embrace delivers crucial insights across both DevOps and frontend teams to illuminate real customer impact – not just server impact – to deliver the best app experiences. Customers like The New York Times, Marriott, Warby Parker, Masterclass, Home Depot, and Cameo love Embrace’s observability platform because it makes extremely complicated and voluminous data actionable.

ScopeAI automates the process of communicating user insights to product and operation teams. The product leverages natural language processing (a form of AI) to extract insights from customer conversations. It integrates with existing support channels such as Zendesk, Intercom, Desk.com (salesforce) to automatically tag and analyze conversations for trends in customer feedback.