YC Spring 2026
Early reads. These 713 companies across 4 YC batches were assessed in July 2026 on limited public evidence. None is hard to displace, and 4 are defensible for now. These standings rest on less evidence than the rest of the site.
203 companies assessed. 168 of them, 82.8%, sit in the two least protected bands. Across all 10,525 companies assessed the share is 53.3%.
The picture
This batch shows what happens when a lot of smart people build in the same three months, using the same models, watching the same demos. Out of 203 companies, 124 are already losing its protection and only one is holding up with real caveats attached. That is not a harsh grading curve, it is what the numbers say plainly: most very young AI companies are entering rooms that are already full. The crowding is obvious in specific spots. Coding-agent wrappers keep getting built on top of Claude Code and Codex, right as Anthropic, OpenAI, and GitHub fold the same features into tools people already use for free. Counter-drone startups are racing Anduril and Picogrid for defense budgets that are getting locked up before the startups land a first customer. Sales, marketing, and support agents are landing on top of HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zendesk, who are shipping the same agent features natively. The one thing separating the small group with real footing from the rest is not the tech, it's whether the founders picked a spot where a giant platform doesn't already own the exact same workflow. Harbor, running actual paid clinical trials, and a handful of niche hardware or vertical plays with slow-moving incumbents, show the opening is real when it's narrow and unglamorous. The wide-open finance, avatar, and app-builder ideas mostly aren't.
All 203 companies, most protected first
| Company | Standing |
|---|---|
| Harbor AI-native CRO that built a Part 11 EDC system and now runs full clinical trials. | Defensible for now |
| 9 Mothers Builds AI-guided, RF-silent acoustic turrets and mission systems for counter-drone defense | Protection under test |
| Advanced Metal Research Early-stage startup building AI robots to automate American welding shops | Protection under test |
| AquaShield AI-powered clamp-on water leak detection sensors for commercial and residential buildings | Protection under test |
| Ardent Ardent gives AI coding agents instant, disposable clones of any Postgres database | Protection under test |
| Astraea Astraea builds AI agents that automate clinical trial biometrics and submission-ready data packages for pharma. | Protection under test |
| Clawvisor Gateway that authorizes and audits what AI agents can do, task by task | Protection under test |
| Discovered Materials Two-person startup using AI agents and DFT to find new chip interconnect materials | Protection under test |
| Dispatch Builds refurbishable reentry vehicles to carry microgravity manufacturing payloads back from orbit | Protection under test |
| Flowscope AI agents that shadow employees to map and automate business workflows | Protection under test |
| Framewise Health Two-person YC startup turning EHR discharge data into AI patient-education videos | Protection under test |
| General Aviation Startup building satellite-linked ATC for US airports with no control tower | Protection under test |
| General Instinct Pre-product startup building a vendor-neutral inference layer for physical AI on edge devices | Protection under test |
| Hessian Forward-deployed AI agents that embed engineers with clients to automate ops, sales, finance | Protection under test |
| Hexa Hexa builds AI agents that automate quoting, order entry, procurement, and AP/AR for industrial distributors. | Protection under test |
| Humwork MCP tool that lets AI coding agents pay humans for live help when stuck | Protection under test |
| InLoop Robotics Startup building bimanual robotic arms that pick and pack warehouse orders. | Protection under test |
| Inth Open-source consent management tool aiming to become paid enterprise privacy governance | Protection under test |
| KelAI KelAI sells an autonomous AI research and signal-generation engine to hedge funds and traders | Protection under test |
| Klaimee Startup that certifies AI agents for risk and sells liability coverage for their failures | Protection under test |
| Kuli AI coworker that runs influencer and content campaigns for brands like Disney and Nivea | Protection under test |
| Minicor Startup that automates legacy Windows desktop software using AI agents | Protection under test |
| OpenWork Open source, self-hostable, multi-model alternative to Claude Cowork for AI agent orchestration | Protection under test |
| Pairio AI mobile app that helps factory technicians diagnose and fix broken machines | Protection under test |
| Parrot Agentic software that runs auto collision shops, from estimates to insurance paperwork | Protection under test |
| PerfectBit, Inc. Two-person YC startup selling verifier-checked synthetic training data to frontier AI labs | Protection under test |
| Playabl.ai YC-backed swipeable feed of AI-generated browser games, built by a 10-person team | Protection under test |
| Ploy AI platform that builds and runs marketing sites and growth funnels for startups | Protection under test |
| Prism AI-native recruiting agency using agents to source, screen, and place candidates for a flat 15% fee | Protection under test |
| Prototyping.io YC startup automating CAD-to-CNC-part quoting and machining with AI | Protection under test |
| qomplement YC startup building AI agents to run supply chain ERP tasks like PO matching and invoicing | Protection under test |
| RASPIRE No-code, AI-driven runtime shielding that hardens mobile apps against tampering and fraud | Protection under test |
| Sherpa Sherpa embeds one line of code that auto-generates and A/B tests website copy | Protection under test |
| Standout AI agent that matches engineers to hiring companies, paid only on placement | Protection under test |
| Voquill Voice AI scribe that drafts pathology reports and suggests CPT billing codes | Protection under test |
| AbInitio Bio AI foundation models that predict drug manufacturing outcomes like titer and aggregation | Losing its protection |
| Adialante Adialante builds low-cost, no-capex mobile MRI scanners for cancer screening in clinics | Losing its protection |
| AICE Two-person startup building modular underwater drones for Navy defense missions | Losing its protection |
| Akkari Akkari builds an AI agent that tracks customer commitments across Slack, email, calls, and CRMs | Losing its protection |
| Alchemize YC-backed startup building AI-native customs brokerage software for importers | Losing its protection |
| Allowance Startup building virtual-card spend controls so AI agents can shop with limits | Losing its protection |
| Amboras AI agent that auto-builds and optimizes online stores, competing with Shopify | Losing its protection |
| Andustry AI-native broker matching SMEs to industrial equipment suppliers fast | Losing its protection |
| Apollo Atomics Startup building compact, truck-transportable nuclear reactors for power-hungry data centers | Losing its protection |
| Apollo Atomics, Inc. Startup building ultra-compact factory-built nuclear reactors for AI data centers | Losing its protection |
| Ara Two-person startup building a self-driving IDE that wraps Claude and Codex for coding tasks | Losing its protection |
| Archer Archer pays AI-labor contractors worldwide in stablecoins, with yield on idle balances | Losing its protection |
| Arctic Health AI-native platform automating provider credentialing and payer enrollment for clinics | Losing its protection |
| Arden AI-native internal audit startup automating SOX control testing with software agents | Losing its protection |
| Arga Labs Builds stateful digital twins of SaaS apps so AI coding agents can test changes without touching production | Losing its protection |
| Arlo Industries Early-stage startup building passive optical sensing to spot drones and missiles | Losing its protection |
| Armature Armature builds tools to monitor and optimize how AI agents experience your product (YC P26) | Losing its protection |
| Arzana AI agents that automate quoting, order entry, and back-office work for factories | Losing its protection |
| Asendia AI AI recruiter that clones a staffing agency's best recruiter into a voice/screening agent | Losing its protection |
| Aseon Labs Builds parking-lot pods that auto-clean and charge robotaxis between rides | Losing its protection |
| Atrisa AI agents that turn plain-language descriptions into analog circuit designs and simulations | Losing its protection |
| Autostep Desktop app that watches work, finds automatable tasks, builds the agents to run them | Losing its protection |
| Auxos YC-backed startup building AI clones of real customers for market research | Losing its protection |
| Avea Robotics Software letting humans remotely take over robots when autonomy fails | Losing its protection |
| BentoLabs AI Self-learning fix-loop that watches AI agents and patches their own errors over time | Losing its protection |
| Biostack Sells healthcare data and RL training environments to AI labs, founded 2025 | Losing its protection |
| BioStack Platforms Builds healthcare training environments and reward functions for AI models | Losing its protection |
| Callab AI AI voice agents that plug into legacy on-prem phone systems (PBX/SIP) for call centers | Losing its protection |
| CharacterQuilt AI agents that log into HubSpot, Salesforce and other tools to deploy marketing campaigns for you | Losing its protection |
| Chronicle Labs Builds staging environments that replay real production data to test AI agents before deployment | Losing its protection |
| Cignara Early-stage AI chat/voice support agent for Fortune 500 companies, YC P26 | Losing its protection |
| Clara AI-native primary care practice with licensed clinicians reviewing AI-drafted care | Losing its protection |
| Cohesion AI agents that automate equity research for institutional investors using public data | Losing its protection |
| Complir Software that turns product compliance paperwork into automated SKU checks | Losing its protection |
| Datost Slack-based AI analyst that answers data questions from your warehouse | Losing its protection |
| Dayjob AI scheduling agent for short haul waste trucking, plugged into ERP systems | Losing its protection |
| Drafted AI tool that generates free, editable custom home floor plans from a text prompt | Losing its protection |
| Eden Robotics Early-stage robots-as-a-service startup charging $10/hour for autonomous robot labor | Losing its protection |
| Enjamb Agentic AI workspace helping drug teams draft trials, stats, and FDA filings | Losing its protection |
| Expanse Software that predicts GPU/HPC resource needs and diagnoses cluster failures | Losing its protection |
| Final Dose Stealth YC startup building one injectable drug meant to recognize and kill any cancer by DNA sequence | Losing its protection |
| Foaster A 2-person YC startup selling AI-agent diagnostics to replace parts of consulting work | Losing its protection |
| Fuchsia AI-native platform that helps hardware makers pass FCC, CE, UL, FDA and ISO certifications faster | Losing its protection |
| Gigacatalyst AI agents let SaaS users build in-app features using the host vendor's own APIs | Losing its protection |
| GojiberryAI AI agent that finds buyers and runs LinkedIn outreach for sales teams | Losing its protection |
| GovGuard Startup automating FOIA request handling and redaction for city and state governments | Losing its protection |
| Gravy Local-first AI agent that tracks spending, answers money questions, aims to act on your behalf | Losing its protection |
| Hedge AI-native wholesale broker placing hard-to-place specialty risks for retail agents | Losing its protection |
| HEVN, inc Startup selling virtual bank accounts and cards to non-US exporters blocked from Brex, Ramp, Mercury | Losing its protection |
| HeyClicky Mac menu-bar voice AI buddy that watches your screen and talks to agents | Losing its protection |
| Hub Hub collects real-world egocentric video to sell as training data for physical AI and robots | Losing its protection |
| Huscarl 2-person AI startup helping companies form and run their own captive insurance | Losing its protection |
| Hyper Hyper builds a shared context layer feeding company data to AI coding agents | Losing its protection |
| Imperfect AI coaching app that adjusts training plans around real-life disruptions for athletes | Losing its protection |
| Infera Lets scientists control lab instruments by typing plain-English commands | Losing its protection |
| InstaAgent AI agency turning one brief into hundreds of persona-targeted ad creatives | Losing its protection |
| Intelligence Factory Early-stage studio building robot manipulation AI trained on glove-captured human demos | Losing its protection |
| jo jo is a personal AI agent app for inbox, calendar, and daily life tasks | Losing its protection |
| Juno Chat app that helps chronic illness patients track symptoms and patterns using AI | Losing its protection |
| Keyframe Labs Two-person startup selling a real-time AI avatar API for video calls | Losing its protection |
| Kimpton AI AI workbench for portfolio managers to research filings and build trade ideas | Losing its protection |
| Kinro AI agents that quote and bind small-business insurance policies without human brokers | Losing its protection |
| Korso Builds AI agents (Atlas) that run manufacturing ERP workflows, plus an OSS coding-agent tool (Shepherd) | Losing its protection |
| KugelAudio On-prem voice AI for EU buyers legally barred from US-hosted voice models | Losing its protection |
| Lab0 AI forward-deployed engineers that get B2B SaaS live for enterprise clients in days | Losing its protection |
| Lattice Health Startup selling signed compliance reports that monitor hospital medical-imaging AI for drift and bias | Losing its protection |
| Lightsprint Adds visual planning and parallel AI coding agents on top of a team's live codebase | Losing its protection |
| Limrun Cloud sandbox infra letting AI coding agents build and test real iOS and Android apps | Losing its protection |
| Linzumi Team chat app that lets engineers direct and audit multiple AI coding agents at once | Losing its protection |
| Lumius Lumius builds a low-cost 3D ultrasound to guide central-line placement | Losing its protection |
| Madrone Two-founder startup building chiller-less dew-point cooling for AI data centers | Losing its protection |
| Manicule Retainer studio writing technical docs and content tuned for AI coding agents | Losing its protection |
| Memoir AI agent turning shipped code (GitHub, Linear, Slack) into marketing content | Losing its protection |
| Memory Store Early-stage startup building a shared memory layer that lets teams and AI agents recall company knowledge | Losing its protection |
| Miso Labs Miso Labs builds open-weights emotive text-to-speech voice models, launched from YC P26 | Losing its protection |
| Mochatrade Offshore leveraged perpetual futures on US stocks, built for Indian retail traders | Losing its protection |
| Mount Insurer covering losses when a company's AI agents mess up on the job | Losing its protection |
| Netter YC startup building AI agents that turn mid-market company data into deployed apps | Losing its protection |
| Nine Fives Maker of driverless, networked RF test attenuators and switches for aerospace, drone, and phone testing | Losing its protection |
| Oddpool Normalizes Kalshi and Polymarket data into APIs/dashboards for institutional prediction-market traders | Losing its protection |
| Ontora AI agents interview every employee to map how work actually happens for AI projects | Losing its protection |
| OpenProse OpenProse builds an open-source runtime for long-running, durable AI agent orchestration | Losing its protection |
| Ornadyne Startup building bird-shaped ornithopter drones for covert military recon | Losing its protection |
| Panacea Two-person startup selling fixed-price, AI-assisted FDA regulatory filing services | Losing its protection |
| Pavoot AI agent that finds event attendees, invites them, and runs CRM follow-up | Losing its protection |
| PLAN0 AI 4-person AI startup turning blueprints into construction cost estimates | Losing its protection |
| Plena Health Software that automates admin work (referrals, scheduling, billing) for specialty medical practices | Losing its protection |
| Pops App for creating and playing AI-generated mini-games with friends | Losing its protection |
| primitive Runs email infrastructure (send/receive, DKIM/DMARC, registry) for AI agents | Losing its protection |
| Probe Early-stage YC startup building AI systems to make software run faster | Losing its protection |
| ProjectX Agent-native cloud workspace for running many parallel AI agents at once | Losing its protection |
| ReasonBlocks Runtime layer that cuts AI agent costs and errors via loop detection and compression | Losing its protection |
| Refortif Atrisa (formerly Refortif) builds agentic AI that designs and debugs analog circuits for engineers | Losing its protection |
| Regbase AI startup that tracks new and proposed regulations across 195 countries for compliance teams | Losing its protection |
| Result An AI toolkit letting solo founders build, pay, and run a whole business | Losing its protection |
| River Markets Startup building a cross-venue trading terminal and prime broker for prediction markets | Losing its protection |
| Rudus AI takeoff and cost-estimating tool built for concrete subcontractors | Losing its protection |
| Runtime Middleware to build and run internal coding agents without infra work | Losing its protection |
| Saudara AI AI-native broker matching US brands with vetted Indonesian factories | Losing its protection |
| ScienceSwarm Free online forum where researchers and AI agents coordinate on open math and science problems | Losing its protection |
| Scope Scope tests how AI agents use a company's software and flags where agents fail | Losing its protection |
| shotwell.ai Four-person startup building an observability layer for robot video data | Losing its protection |
| Silmaril Two-person YC startup selling a runtime layer that blocks prompt injection on AI agents | Losing its protection |
| smol machines Makes portable, single-file microVMs for running AI-agent code sandboxes | Losing its protection |
| Soria AI financial research terminal built for healthcare investors, 3-person YC team | Losing its protection |
| Superset Superset lets developers run and review multiple AI coding agents in parallel from one interface | Losing its protection |
| Surtr Defense Software that fuses sensors and interceptors into one counter-drone operating system. | Losing its protection |
| Surtr Defense Systems Maker of ParallaxOS, a hardware-agnostic fusion OS for counter-drone defense | Losing its protection |
| Taiga AI-native billing service that runs claims, coding, and denial recovery for independent medical practices | Losing its protection |
| Tasklet Tasklet makes AI agents that complete tasks by routing across tools and models | Losing its protection |
| Tday Turns every code merge into ready-to-post demo videos and marketing content | Losing its protection |
| Tenet Industries Early-stage startup building low-cost, mass-producible strike drones for Ukraine/NATO buyers | Losing its protection |
| Tolmo Tolmo is an early-stage startup building AI agents that detect, triage, and fix security issues in code and cloud. | Losing its protection |
| transload Turns existing security cameras into freight dimension scanners to catch underdeclared shipments | Losing its protection |
| Trellis Trellis aggregates state trial court records and analytics for litigators and firms | Losing its protection |
| Userlens AI agents that flag churn risk and drive renewals for enterprise software teams | Losing its protection |
| ValCtrl Tiny NYC startup that turns typed beliefs into matches on Kalshi and Polymarket order books | Losing its protection |
| Walter AI agent that logs into ERP systems to automate manufacturing order entry and procurement | Losing its protection |
| Wealor AI-native platform helping wealth managers unify data and automate advisor workflows | Losing its protection |
| WithAI Builds AI agent tools (Multiplier) for mid-market hedge funds, $250M-$5B AUM | Losing its protection |
| YouArt AI art/video studio pivoting into a Patreon-style subscription platform for AI-made shows | Losing its protection |
| Zenbu Extensible desktop IDE for running multiple AI coding agents in parallel, built on Pi | Losing its protection |
| Zibra Labs Zibra Labs builds distributed compute infrastructure for quant funds running large-scale backtesting | Losing its protection |
| Zolvo AI back-office automation that reconciles bank statements and invoices for factoring and ABL lenders | Losing its protection |
| AgentPhone Provisions phone numbers (voice/SMS/MMS) via API/MCP so AI agents can call and text | Little protection left |
| AndCo AI agent software that builds personal injury case workups for plaintiff law firms | Little protection left |
| ANORIA Pre-shipment wearable that reads emotions via AI (SOMI) to boost user EQ | Little protection left |
| Aster Aster is a 2-person YC startup building AI agents that automate open-ended scientific research. | Little protection left |
| Bloom Ingests a brand's identity and generates on-brand images for AI agents | Little protection left |
| Bujo AI agents for enterprise customer support, formerly Bujo, now Cignara | Little protection left |
| CentralComs Two-person startup selling AI agents for maintenance and leasing to property managers | Little protection left |
| Chert Startup selling unofficial iMessage API access so businesses can text customers in blue bubbles | Little protection left |
| Deep Interactions YC-backed startup building a team-collaboration layer on top of AI app builders | Little protection left |
| Drip Drip is a two-person AI tool that auto-finds leads and messages them on LinkedIn, iMessage, and email | Little protection left |
| ED1TH Pre-launch startup building an AI assistant layer, 'Jarvis IRL', for smart glasses | Little protection left |
| Elyra Voice AI and email booking system for restaurants, built in Sweden | Little protection left |
| Enjamb Labs Software that runs drug development programs from discovery to FDA filing | Little protection left |
| Foresight Two-person startup that runs AI-persona simulations to test CPG products before launch | Little protection left |
| Incandor Pre-seed startup selling behavioral biometrics APIs to catch fraud and account takeover | Little protection left |
| InsForge InsForge builds a backend platform designed for AI coding agents, not humans. | Little protection left |
| Interfaze Interfaze: a 5-person YC startup selling an API model for OCR, extraction, and ASR | Little protection left |
| Kinect Kinect builds AI shopping assistants and agent-ready storefronts for D2C brands | Little protection left |
| Klarify AI agent that writes therapy session notes in 20+ clinical formats | Little protection left |
| Lamina Labs Turns documents and prompts into whiteboard style explainer videos via AI | Little protection left |
| Light Anchor Two-person startup using AI agents to run several small Shopify D2C stores | Little protection left |
| Maquoketa Research Maquoketa builds low-cost AI terminal-guidance modules for one-way attack drones | Little protection left |
| Modern AI-native IT help desk startup pitching itself as the ServiceNow killer | Little protection left |
| Napkin Math Small app that photographs your food and coaches you on nutrition using AI | Little protection left |
| Pentagon Pentagon is a workspace where teams of humans and AI agents get coordinated and tracked (YC P26) | Little protection left |
| RentAHuman A marketplace where AI agents post bounties and hire humans for real-world tasks | Little protection left |
| Replicas Cloud platform for running coding agents like Claude Code or Codex remotely | Little protection left |
| Revnu Revnu is a two-person AI agent that runs ads, outbound, SEO, and content for startups | Little protection left |
| Saffron Assessment platform where candidates use Claude Code and get scored on it | Little protection left |
| Salesgraph Salesgraph makes AI agents that draft briefs and follow-ups to push enterprise deals forward | Little protection left |
| Savant Savant builds a memory layer so AI agents know how a company actually works | Little protection left |
| Smartbase AI tool that reads scanned/faxed purchase orders and enters them into a manufacturer's existing ERP | Little protection left |
| StableBrowse Early-stage startup selling browser automation tools and training data to AI labs | Little protection left |
| Stage Stage organizes code diffs into readable chapters for human and AI reviewers | Little protection left |
| Standard Signal Solo-founder AI hedge fund where AI researches, decides, and trades with no human loop | Little protection left |
| Superlog Open-source tool that auto-instruments apps, groups errors, and opens fix PRs | Little protection left |
| Synphony Early-stage startup building robots and software to harvest strawberries | Little protection left |
| TakeCareOS AI-native operating system for small home and long term care agencies | Little protection left |
| TesterArmy AI agent that tests web and mobile apps from plain language instructions | Little protection left |
| The Company Company YC-backed startup pitching one horizontal AI agent to run whole companies | Little protection left |
| Thomas An AI agent marketed as a fully autonomous "founder" that finds gigs and runs its own businesses | Little protection left |
| Twolabs Pre-seed startup building Tobi, a humanoid caregiving robot, still in prototype | Little protection left |
| Uno Wallet App that auto-picks the best rewards card to tap for payment on iPhone | Little protection left |
| Wato Two-person startup building a governance and shared-memory layer for AI agents at work | Little protection left |
Questions people ask
- which YC spring 2026 startups are most likely to survive
- Harbor stands out because it already has paid clinical trial contracts and is pulling sponsors from IQVIA and ICON. Trellis, Dayjob, and Nine Fives also look steadier, mostly because they're in narrow niches without a big rival breathing down their neck yet, not because they've proven much.
- why are so many YC AI startups losing its protection
- Out of 203 companies in this batch, 124 are losing its protection because most are building thin layers on top of tools that OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, or Shopify are now shipping natively. When the platform ships the same feature for free, the startup's wedge disappears.
- is building a coding agent startup a good idea right now
- This batch has several coding-agent wrappers, Ara, Replicas, Runtime, and Hyper, and all four face direct pressure from Anthropic's Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex, and GitHub Copilot building the same orchestration and context features into tools people already use.
- what counter-drone startups came out of YC spring 2026
- Surtr Defense Systems, Surtr Defense, and 9 Mothers are all building counter-drone systems, and all three are up against Anduril's Lattice platform and Picogrid, which already have major contracts (Anduril's $20B Army deal, Picogrid's Northrop Grumman partnership).
- are AI sales and marketing agent startups from this batch worth watching
- CharacterQuilt, GojiberryAI, and Ploy all sell agent tools for sales, marketing, or website building, and all three face the exact same feature being shipped natively by HubSpot, Salesforce, or Webflow, which makes their path to paying customers narrow.
- which YC startups have almost no protection from competitors
- Fifteen or more companies in this batch score a moat of 1, the lowest rating given, including Cohesion, Kinect, Standard Signal, Pentagon, Hyper, ScienceSwarm, CharacterQuilt, Gravy, AndCo, Superlog, CentralComs, Ara, Allowance, Result, Keyframe Labs, Saffron, and Replicas.
What to watch
- A large platform (HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Snowflake, Databricks, Webflow) announces a native agent feature matching one of these startups' core function
- A defense prime (Anduril, Picogrid) signs a new government contract in counter-drone or C2 systems
- Harbor or Dayjob discloses a second or third paying customer contract
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