Industrials Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) in the San Francisco Bay Area 2026

About Oklo Inc.: Oklo Inc. (Oklo) is developing advanced fission power plants to provide emission-free, reliable, and affordable energy. Oklo received a Site Use Permit from the U.S Department of Energy, has performed successful prototypic fuel fabrication, was awarded fuel material from Idaho National Laboratory, developed the first advanced fission combined license application accepted and docketed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is developing advanced fuel recycling technologies in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and national laboratories. Oklo has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Popular Mechanics, Wired, Architectural Digest, Hyperallergic, POWER Magazine, has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case, and is featured in the Oliver Stone documentary Nuclear, among other features.

Silica makes the first affordable actuators that sense forces directly, so that all robots can feel the world around them.

Hundred is an automated inspection system for consumer electronics parts. We help factories cut waste and prevent line-down issues by catching sub-millimeter cosmetic defects before parts reach the assembly line. Designs change so fast that traditional vision models can't keep up, meaning factories still rely on manual inspection, literally people checking parts under microscopes to sort out bad parts. Human inspectors miss ~15% of defects which can turn a finished device into scrap. Defects cost U.S. discrete manufacturers $45 billion a year, and Erica saw this problem firsthand designing hardware at Meta, Google, and Magic Leap. She met Imani at Columbia's admitted-students day in 2017, and later met Iris through mutual friends in the Bay Area. Imani spent the last five years at Twitch building software that handles billions of requests a day, and Iris worked in Quant at Citadel before pivoting to research machine learning methods on 3D meshes and other structured data at Imperial College London. Now the team is building Hundred because manual inspection shouldn't exist in 2026.

Mantle is a full-stack field service company that deploys, fixes and maintains machines for the companies that build them. We're not a marketplace or software tool, we own uptime directly to provide better, more reliable service without burdening your engineers on support calls. $500B+ a year is spent to keep machines running in the US, we're coming for all of it.

Streamline Systems is building the replacement for GPS. Satellite positioning has become the single point of failure for almost every modern system, both military and civil. We've built the replacement. A drop-in module that integrates with existing Ardupilot, INAV and PX4 flight controllers, with demonstrated satellite-independent autonomous flight and GPS handoff. We're currently working with commercial and military end users to deploy the capability.

Lark builds specialized AI agents that automate manual workflows for wholesale distributors. Our agents work with existing ERP systems, learning from each distributor’s historical data and the team’s decisions. Together, these agents can run a distributor’s entire operation.

Micora builds a solar-farm-in-a-box that can be shipped anywhere and built without specialized labor. We have designed a new type of solar farm micorgrid that is palletized, lightweight, and deployable. Our system autonomously builds 100kWp of capacity per day and is easily scalable to MWs of capacity which is a size currently only serviced by slow moving and at capacity EPCs. As demand from data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrification strains existing power infrastructure, the ability to deploy substantial generation quickly is becoming increasingly valuable and unavailable. We are the only company that services utility-scale power needs in weeks.

Deploy's core belief is that robots should be useful. Getting a generalist robot to do real work is fundamentally the same problem across industries. We build everything between the model and the task to bring generalist robots to the businesses that actually need them.

Shepherd Robotics builds general purpose robots for skilled physical work across AI infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. Our robots are powered by robot foundation models and use modular, flexible hardware designed to adapt to different environments and tasks. We train our systems on a combination of real world and simulation data so they can learn complex manipulation skills and generalize across workflows. We also provide integration into customers’ existing workflows, starting with data center construction and operations, electrical manufacturing and testing, and electronics manufacturing, where traditional automation struggles with variability, dexterity, and changing environments. 

Every instance of intelligence occurring in nature is embodied. Scientific intelligence is no different. We are building general-purpose robotic experimentalists: systems that unite scientific reasoning and physical action to iterate toward discovery by observing, hypothesizing and experimenting.

Dreamscale Labs is building the fastest cloud inference platform for robotics. As complex physical AI models become difficult to fit on expensive on-robot GPUs, we let users offload inference to the cloud and serve them with real-time latency. So far, we've hit 40-50% lower latency than existing neoclouds.

At Orca, we are focused on creating the future of spacecraft operations by moving control onto the vehicle. By allowing AI models to control the satellite using deterministic tooling, we are able to achieve the same holistic, high-quality decisions on "what" to do to carry out a mission while maintaining the safety of systems that decide "how" to execute it.

Edgerun builds military exoskeletons. The first product is a 10-pound hip system that fits over existing kit and doubles a soldier’s range. Since April 2026, Edgerun built over a dozen iterations of their product through continuous field tests with Ukrainian fighters and secured $150M+ in LOIs. Founder David Venegas previously co-founded Durin (autonomous mining robotics) and worked at Stoke Space (at 19) and Hadrian. He is a high-school dropout, state-championship runner, adventure athlete, and pilot. Edgerun is a Y Combinator company backed by General H.R. McMaster, Cyan Banister, Joshua Steinman and Jason Miller. edgerun.com

We build physical agent harnesses to enable AI to debug, validate, and ship functional hardware and software.

We make mass-deployable radars for unmanned systems. Our first product is Archimedes, a radar seeker that finds and locks onto targets, enabling autonomous intercept on any drone. We have over $580M in LOIs for Archimedes, across some of the largest defense primes in Ukraine, the EU, and the Middle East. Seekers are the most critical and costly component in every autonomous interceptor. Developing a radar seeker takes a 200+ person team at Raytheon and hundreds of millions of dollars. Archimedes is 100x cheaper than existing radar seekers on the market - and is the first product to make it feasible to deploy radars on every drone.

Meteoric is building drones that clear clouds over solar farms and ultimately weaken severe storms and hurricanes.

We deploy robots that learn new tasks from a single human demonstration in the factory. We're starting in contract manufacturing, where lines change every week and both traditional automation and today's VLAs fall over. Our founding team has 20+ years of experience in robotics. Navid was part of the core team that productized Spot at Boston Dynamics and led manipulation projects there. Before that, he was at Rethink Robotics. Mojtaba led whole-body control and manipulation efforts at Amazon Robotics and was a Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University.

Every serious robotics lab is bottlenecked on the same thing: demonstration data. The field has converged on egocentric video and hand pose as the substrate, and both are now cheap to collect at scale. What neither of them contains is force. A video of someone picking up an egg and a video of someone picking up a rock are nearly identical in pixel space and nearly identical in joint angles. They differ almost entirely in a quantity nobody is recording. Policies trained without it learn geometry and inherit no sense of touch. Hemlock closes that gap at the source. Our device, the Bracelet, is a wrist-worn surface EMG band that reads the electrical activity of the forearm muscles that actually drive the hand, which means it recovers contraction force directly rather than inferring it from motion. This distinction is the whole thesis: force cannot be reconstructed downstream of kinematics, because a hand squeezing hard isometrically and a hand resting can occupy the identical pose. Muscle signal is the only non-invasive channel that separates them.

Our first model, Atom 1, pre-trained on the internets video, and fine tuned for physics. It has been action conditioned, so you can simulate robot actions within it. This lets Robot Labs train their robots using GPUs instead of relying on human collected manual data that is slow and expensive. In unseen and hard to replicate environments, this is the only path to getting ANY training data.

twentyfour26 builds autonomous CNC machining cells for rapid prototyping, so hardware teams can iterate with software speed.

Enact creates the physical environments to benchmark and hill climb robotics models on high-value tasks. We find where robots fail, and fix them with our in-house training loop.

We mass-produce modular data centers that deploy on stalled infrastructure projects losing billions per week. Delayed infrastructure projects hemorrhage $1B a week in the US alone - Pacific mass-produces modular data centers that deploy on those sites in days and turn their unused power into revenue. Data centers are stuck for years waiting for power, while delayed construction sites across the world sit on unused interconnects, losing billions of dollars per week in interest on trillions of dollars of debt. Our pods deploy on those sites and generate revenue for them in days. They use diamond wafers in the cooling system so pods run anywhere on earth, even a desert. We'll use the same mechanisms we're building today to deploy compute across the galaxy.

Marengo is the AI-native engineering firm automating engineering design, starting with data centers. We’ve generated $70K in revenue in our first month, with $4M in contracts to deliver. Marengo is backed by YC, Exor, Future Planet Capital, undisclosed $2B AUM family office, and other top-tier investors. Our team includes the former President & CEO of Saipem America ($3B+ P&L), former President of Exyte's Advanced Technology Facilities GBU ($6B+ P&L) and more.

VIM connects to the entire cell: PLCs, robots, CNC machines, sensors. When a cell faults, VIM finds the cause, stages the fix, and the operator approves with one click. When a part drifts, VIM catches it seconds after the cut, inside the machine, and recommends the correction. Recovery drops from 30 minutes to under two, saving more than $15,000 per fault in large factories.

Hebbian Robotics automates data evaluation for physical AI and robotics. Our customers use us to build quality control pipelines in just a few lines of code, with custom models 10x faster and 8x cheaper than general foundation models. https://hebbianrobotics.com/ https://github.com/Hebbian-Robotics/hflow

We are building robots that can work autonomously in existing wet labs. Unlike traditional lab automation, which requires dedicated equipment and fixed workflows, our robot moves between workstations, manipulates existing scientific equipment, transports lab materials, and executes experiments using the same lab infrastructure as a human technician. We make the robots easy to manage through natural interfaces like Slack, email, and phone. Our goal is to make deploying robots in wet labs as easy as onboarding a new employee, and to accelerate scientific research!

IMPACT builds autonomous interceptor drones that ship in sealed containers. The box sits at the site it protects, data centers, power grids, airports, bases, with no crew on the pad. When sensors cue a hostile drone, an interceptor pierces its own frangible lid, launches, and rams the target, guided by onboard vision that keeps working when GPS is jammed. Legacy effectors cost $1M+ per shot against $30k threats; ours cost less than the threat and scale with the swarm, the same class of interceptor already downing Shahed drones over Ukraine. Sites subscribe to protection instead of buying missiles, hardware, reloads and monitoring included: Air Defense as a Service. 180M+ USD in signed letters of intent.

Lambda Robotics builds and deploys robots for the infrastructure powering frontier AI.

Kara is building diamond semiconductors. We begin with growing ultra-high purity diamond wafers for advanced hardware. Used in data centers, spacecrafts, RF systems, and quantum hardware, our diamond moves heat up to 5× better than copper, helping critical systems run cooler, faster, and more reliably. Diamond has spent centuries as a symbol. We are turning it into infrastructure.

Applied Electrodynamics builds imaging systems that see through solid matter. Our team previously co-invented the iPhone touchscreen and Nest learning thermostat. We’re starting in construction, helping teams map structural elements and utilities inside walls and ceilings. The same platform extends to security screening and cargo inspection. Our mission is to make the hidden physical world machine-readable across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

We are building nuclear power delivery ships to power our floating compute barges at sea. Our systems are fully standalone, have better cooling, and avoid all the resource competition that leads to local community opposition. Our centralized manufacturing allows us to deploy anywhere on Earth, four times faster than on land.

Maingen builds simulations for industrial operations ($5 trillion slice of the US economy) so frontier labs can train models that actually run power plants, factories, and datacenters.

Proprio Robotics is building state-of-the-art physical intelligence to automate the entire data center lifecycle—from buildout to maintenance to decommissioning. There are currently 400,000 unstaffed data center technicians positions in the United States alone, which means the massive compute needs of AI are being bottlenecked by labor constraints. Proprio is solving this by building robots that do it instead, and is deploying data center maintenance robots starting Q1 2027.

At Hera, we build tools that help heavy engineering teams bring products to market up to 20× faster. Today, we work with manufacturers of data center ancillary equipment, renewable energy systems, robotics, heat exchangers, power plants and pressure vessels.

Enabling robot deployment & autonomy

We’re building collaborative robotic crews for large-scale infrastructure projects, including solar farms and data centers. 002C: “002A, 5.3 mm left.” 002B: “002A, you’re running low. Next pallet is on the way.” 002C: “Am I clear to come in?” 002A: “Aligned. Panel released. You’re clear.” 002C: “Fastening.” 002B: “Next load arriving now.” This isn’t a human crew talking. It’s three robots building a utility-scale solar farm together. Our AI control system enables specialized robots to collaborate, learn reusable construction skills, like alignment, fastening, and manipulation, and transfer them across workflows, from solar farms to data centers. 🚧 🦺

Skymerse is building one AI system for airline flight operations: from planning and monitoring in the operations center to real-time support in the cockpit. It is developing specialized aeronautical models that understand the data, constraints, and procedures behind each flight, replacing fragmented tools and manual interpretation. Notamify, its first product, already serves airline customers and thousands pilots and aviation professionals.

ProvenMetal manufactures the fastest circuit boards in the United States. Domestic circuit board manufacturing is slow and expensive, and while reshoring is happening, the supply chain isn't there yet. We automate the bottlenecks - part procurement, DFM review, and assembly - delivering circuit boards in days instead of weeks.

Earendil Robotics builds cUAS solutions for the modern warfighter, enabling effective air defence at the small-unit level. We deliver spotting, engaging, and destroying capabilities through advanced sensors, autonomous interceptors, and integrated systems. Our product lineup covers every stage of the kill chain, complemented by the Drone Warfare Academy that trains soldiers to eliminate enemy drone threats in contested environments. Backed by worldwide frontline combat experience, we equip units with combat-proven tools to counter evolving aerial threats.

Torus lets engineering firms and project owners build infrastructure 10x faster to reindustrialize America and the West. We're working with multiple Fortune 500 companies to build critical infrastructure including data centers and critical energy installations.

Robocurve builds open-source tools and independent benchmarks to measure how well robots can do real-world jobs. Instead of relying on unverified demo videos from frontier labs, we score their models on reproducible benchmarks that anyone can trust. Today there are no well-run, standardized robotics benchmarks. Labs evaluate in-house, and no independent group has stepped in to run continuous benchmarking as a service. The result is that no one actually knows how good anyone else is, or where the real frontier sits. Good benchmarks require operating and maintaining physical hardware and real-world setups. Simulation only goes so far, since models that look strong in sim can show large performance gaps once deployed in the real world. Building real-world benchmarks means coordinating job-domain experts, evals engineering, and hands-on robotics all at once. Frontier labs are targeting general-purpose robotics by 2028, yet the field of robotics evals barely exists. Whoever builds the trusted measure of robot capability becomes the reference everyone relies on. We combine backgrounds in AI evals and robotics to build and grow this field as fast as possible. We already shipped v1 of our open-source framework, Inspect Robots, and ran our first pilot scoring a frontier model on a real robot.

83 Sciences uses AI to mine discarded experimental data and drive scientific breakthroughs. Working alongside labs, we discover the materials that will power the new Industrial Revolution.

Our mission is to build a city on Mars. Cosmic-1, the first equipment in our fleet, is an autonomous robot capable of heavy-lift manipulation. Its been deployed on some of the largest solar farms in the US, more than doubling labor productivity across tens of thousands of panel installs. We're scaling in solar, expanding in data centers, and building lunar construction robotics under contract with NASA.

We manufacture Nori: A sub-$2000 bimanual mobile manipulator that can clean rooms, restock shelves, and fold clothes. Nori can handle basic tasks out of the box, and its software lets anyone teach Nori to automate work specific to their home or business. Nori aims to solve the robotics data bottleneck. By deploying affordable robots to customers around the world, we can gather the diverse data required to train the next generation of generalist robotic policies. Every user of Nori makes Nori smarter. Since launching 6 weeks ago we have already deployed our first robot and have over $440k+ in sales. We can bring general-purpose robotics to homes and businesses that could never afford it before. There are 132.7 million households and 8.4 million employer business locations in the U.S. At $1,688 per robot, selling just one Nori to 0.5% of them represents a $1.2B market opportunity in the U.S. alone.

Our software turns any robot we deploy into an everyday independent worker at your facility. They are able to walk sites, handle instruments, overcome obstacles, collect measurements, and generate auditable compliance records, replacing hours of mandatory manual surveys and inspections. Built by Los Alamos robotics veterans and deterministic-manipulation researchers, we started in nuclear and are already expanding to other hazardous industries.

Praxis captures the data physical AI is bottlenecked on: egocentric video, 3D scans, and multimodal capture from inside real industrial and residential environments. Embedded within publicly listed and unicorn-scale conglomerates, we reach 60k workers across 5 continents and 150+ environment types, supplying the real-world training data frontier labs and humanoid companies can't source anywhere else.