YC Winter 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.
209 companies assessed. 161 of them, 77.0%, 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 chase the same handful of ideas at the same time. Out of 209 companies, 123 are losing its protection and only 3 are holding steady with real caveats attached. That is not unusual for very young companies, most startups this size do not make it, but the pattern here is sharper than normal: entire clusters piled into spaces that a big company or a better funded peer already owns. Spec-driven coding tools, AI chat copilots, agent identity tools, and OpenClaw hosting each drew multiple entrants right as GitHub, Anthropic, Microsoft, and well funded rivals shipped the same feature for free or folded it into a platform people already use. The startups holding up best picked narrower or less obvious ground: a benchmark nonprofit labs actually rely on, a law firm serving a specific client tier, a protein-data platform for pharma, a grid-modeling tool for utilities. The one thing separating the two groups isn't the tech, most of these teams can build the thing. It's whether someone bigger, richer, or already trusted by the customer was going to build it too, and got there first with a free version.
All 209 companies, most protected first
| Company | Standing |
|---|---|
| 10x Science AI platform that analyzes mass-spec protein data for pharma drug development | Defensible for now |
| ARC Prize Foundation Nonprofit that builds AGI benchmarks (ARC-AGI) frontier labs use to grade their own models | Defensible for now |
| General Legal AI-native law firm handling contracts and legal work for growth-stage startups | Defensible for now |
| AxionOrbital Space Two-person startup building an AI model that turns radar satellite images into optical-style pictures | Protection under test |
| Axis AI copilot helping commodity trading desks parse unstructured market signals | Protection under test |
| Brumby (formerly GrazeMate) Brumby builds autonomous drones that herd, weigh, and monitor cattle for ranches | Protection under test |
| ClaimGlide AI tool that drafts and files prior authorizations for private medical practices | Protection under test |
| Cofia YC-backed startup whose AI agent watches your workflows and builds automations itself | Protection under test |
| Copperlane AI agent (Penny) that reads mortgage documents and preps loan files for lenders | Protection under test |
| Corelayer AI on-call and SRE agent startup targeting regulated industries, YC W26, team of 3 | Protection under test |
| DAIVIN Pre-seed startup building electrolysis gear so divers can skip oxygen tanks | Protection under test |
| EigenPal Early-stage AI platform that extracts and automates document workflows for regulated enterprises | Protection under test |
| End Close AI reconciliation tool for high-volume payments companies, YC W26 batch | Protection under test |
| Fed10 AI agents that research, draft, and track bills for government affairs teams | Protection under test |
| Haladir AI layer that turns logistics rules into solver constraints for WMS/TMS/OMS systems | Protection under test |
| Hex Security YC W26 startup using AI agents to automatically find and exploit security holes | Protection under test |
| Inviscid AI Singapore startup using AI physics models to simulate industrial and data center cooling | Protection under test |
| Jinba Chat tool that turns plain English requests into deployable enterprise workflows | Protection under test |
| Librar Labs AI system for schools to catalog, scan, and manage library inventory | Protection under test |
| Maywood Five-person YC startup building proactive, compliance-first AI for M&A dealmakers | Protection under test |
| MochaCare AI plus human back-office service that runs hiring and scheduling for home-care agencies | Protection under test |
| MouseCat AI agents that investigate fraud cases for banks, marketplaces, crypto exchanges | Protection under test |
| Overshoot Overshoot routes live video feeds to AI vision models with low latency | Protection under test |
| Panta AI-agent-run commercial insurance brokerage placing hard-to-place E&S risk | Protection under test |
| Piris Labs Early stage photonics startup building optical interconnects for AI inference | Protection under test |
| Pocket Pocket sells a $129 AI voice recorder for capturing real-world conversations as notes | Protection under test |
| Pollinate Pollinate builds AI agents that auto-match invoices, POs, and receipts across supply chain ERPs | Protection under test |
| Polymath Builds simulated training and evaluation environments for long-horizon AI agents | Protection under test |
| Protent Protent sells AI software that lets police search live camera feeds in plain English. | Protection under test |
| REV1 Startup building AI that auto-generates mechanical engineering drawings from 3D CAD models | Protection under test |
| Revion AI that records technician voice notes and answers service calls for car dealerships | Protection under test |
| Rhizome AI AI assistant that answers FDA and EMA regulatory questions from public filings | Protection under test |
| Robby AI agents that find and close upsell revenue during home service technician visits | Protection under test |
| Salus Runtime guardrails that check an AI agent's actions before it executes them | Protection under test |
| Seeing Systems Builds modular AI-commanded strike drones and swarm-control software for military buyers | Protection under test |
| Sequence Markets Startup building one dashboard to trade crypto spot, perps, and prediction markets across venues | Protection under test |
| Signals Sends iMessage texts that bring DTC shoppers back to buy again | Protection under test |
| Squid AI agents that build a live, versioned model of the power grid for utility planners | Protection under test |
| Synthetic Sciences Two-person startup building a model-agnostic AI workbench for scientific research | Protection under test |
| Unisson AI agents (Runner, Explorer) that automate B2B software implementation and onboarding | Protection under test |
| Vector Legal AI-native law firm and legal software handling startup legal work like SAFEs and incorporation | Protection under test |
| Velum Labs Two-person startup selling automated data-quality monitoring to regulated firms | Protection under test |
| Ventura AI teammates that auto-handle quoting and order entry for industrial distributors | Protection under test |
| Veriad Veriad builds AI agents that review ad and marketing copy for compliance before it ships | Protection under test |
| Voygr Maps API that validates and freshens place data for AI agents and apps | Protection under test |
| Wayco AI operator for medical-legal cases: voice intake, record RAG, demand letters | Protection under test |
| Wideframe AI coworker that preps, tags, and organizes raw footage for video editors. | Protection under test |
| Zymbly AI copilot startup helping aircraft technicians troubleshoot and file compliant paperwork faster | Protection under test |
| /dev/fast /dev/fast is a YC W26 startup building an AI-native code forge for agent-authored code | Losing its protection |
| 21st Registry of AI-ready UI components plus a cross-provider coding agent orchestration tool | Losing its protection |
| Anchorhead A fractional buyer for hardware startups building parts in critical industries | Losing its protection |
| Approxima Two-person startup building an AI agent that tests and fixes code before merge | Losing its protection |
| Ashr Ashr is a two-founder YC W26 startup building multimodal testing tools for AI agents | Losing its protection |
| Asimov Startup paying people to film themselves moving, to train humanoid robot AI | Losing its protection |
| Aurorin CAD Solo-founder startup building a modern CAD kernel with an AI chat design agent | Losing its protection |
| AutoSitu AI agents that review city development plans against building codes | Losing its protection |
| Autumn AI Scrapes LinkedIn, GitHub, X, SEC filings to alert sales teams on buying signals | Losing its protection |
| Avoice AI workspace that automates admin work for architecture firms: specs, coordination, code checks | Losing its protection |
| AxionOrbital Two-person startup building AI that turns satellite radar images into optical-style pictures | Losing its protection |
| Balance AI-native accounting firm for SMBs, AI bookkeeping with human sign-off | Losing its protection |
| Beacon Health AI agents that work inside EHRs to run value-based care tasks for primary care clinics | Losing its protection |
| BeeSafe AI Startup building AI agents that pose as targets to engage and expose scammers for banks | Losing its protection |
| Beyond Reach Labs Builds giant deployable solar arrays to power orbital data centers and satellites | Losing its protection |
| Bidflow AI copilot that automates electrical takeoff and estimating from CAD/PDF drawings | Losing its protection |
| Booko AI dynamic pricing layer for salons, spas, and other time-slot businesses | Losing its protection |
| Bubble Lab AI-native workflow automation: turns Slack requests into code (Pearl) | Losing its protection |
| Burt Burt builds AI teammates that sit on a freight broker's TMS to automate check calls and ETAs. | Losing its protection |
| Button Computer Pre-launch $179 clip-on push-to-talk voice AI wearable, paired to your iPhone | Losing its protection |
| Byteport Byteport sells a UDP based protocol to speed up transfers of very large files. | Losing its protection |
| Cajal A two-person startup using AI to formally verify math proofs and now binaries | Losing its protection |
| Canary AI QA tool that reads your codebase to auto-generate and run tests on pull requests | Losing its protection |
| Caretta Real-time AI assistant that whispers answers to sales reps during live calls | Losing its protection |
| Cascade Two-founder YC W26 startup building evaluation tools for AI agents | Losing its protection |
| CatchBack Cards App for ripping digital trading card packs with transparent odds and a buyback guarantee | Losing its protection |
| CellType Two-person startup using LLMs to simulate cell biology for drug discovery | Losing its protection |
| Chamber AI teammate that finds and reclaims idle GPU capacity across cloud reservations | Losing its protection |
| Chasi AI agents that handle sales, rental, and service requests for equipment dealers | Losing its protection |
| CodeWisp YC-backed app that turns text prompts into playable browser games | Losing its protection |
| Compresr Compresr sells an API that compresses LLM context to cut token costs | Losing its protection |
| Condor Energy French startup building AI software to help big companies buy and hedge electricity | Losing its protection |
| Congruent Pre-seed startup building AI-native raw radar hardware and simulators for self-driving cars | Losing its protection |
| Constellation Space AI software that predicts satellite failures and reroutes mid-tier fleets | Losing its protection |
| Corvera Startup building an MCP context layer that unifies CPG brand data for AI tools | Losing its protection |
| Crosslayer Labs Early-stage startup detecting BGP hijacks and certificate spoofing to stop website impersonation | Losing its protection |
| Crow Crow is a 2-person startup selling a chat widget that lets SaaS users trigger app actions | Losing its protection |
| Cumulus Labs Two-person startup selling a faster, drop-in API for running AI model inference. | Losing its protection |
| Didit Developer-first identity verification API with transparent per-check pricing | Losing its protection |
| Ditto Biosciences Early biotech using AI to mine parasite and virus proteins for autoimmune drug candidates | Losing its protection |
| Docura Health AI tool that drafts workers'-comp medical-legal (IME/QME/AME) reports for evaluators | Losing its protection |
| Doomersion App that teaches languages through TikTok-style short video feeds | Losing its protection |
| Emdash Open-source tool that runs multiple AI coding agents in parallel via git worktrees | Losing its protection |
| Envariant Pre-release SDK for interpreting and steering foundation models, whitelist-only beta | Losing its protection |
| Fenrock AI Two-person startup building AI agents to automate bank compliance and fraud work | Losing its protection |
| Fixture AI-first CRM startup built for early-stage companies, from YC W26. | Losing its protection |
| Foreman AI tool turning contractor blueprints into estimates, invoices, and job data | Losing its protection |
| FullSeam 3-person startup building AI agents to automate AR/AP for corporate accounting teams | Losing its protection |
| Galactic Resource Utilization Space, Inc. (GRU Space) YC-backed startup taking $250K-$1M deposits for a 2032 lunar hotel built from moon regolith | Losing its protection |
| General Astronautics Two-person startup building robotic automation for future in-orbit labs on space stations | Losing its protection |
| Grade API letting companies pay creators and contractors automatically when they hit performance targets | Losing its protection |
| Hlabs Early-stage startup building US-made robot actuators and motor controllers | Losing its protection |
| Human Archive Multimodal data provider for robots: video, tactile, IMU capture for world models | Losing its protection |
| InventoryQuant Turns video walkthroughs into priced insurance inventory lists automatically | Losing its protection |
| IonRouter Two-person startup routing LLM inference calls faster and cheaper via custom CUDA kernels | Losing its protection |
| Kampala Turns apps without public APIs into callable APIs via a reverse-engineering proxy | Losing its protection |
| Kita AI startup that turns financial documents into credit risk signals for emerging-market lenders | Losing its protection |
| Kyten Technologies Startup selling fast-custom aerospace battery packs for drones and small satellites | Losing its protection |
| Lance Builds AI agents that answer hotel calls and run front desk tasks without PMS integrations | Losing its protection |
| Laurence Software that manages Amazon ad bidding to protect profit margin, not just ad-cost ratios | Losing its protection |
| LegalOS AI-native immigration law firm filing visa petitions with in-house AI agents | Losing its protection |
| Lexius AI software that retrofits existing security cameras for theft and safety detection | Losing its protection |
| Luel Marketplace paying human contributors for rights-cleared multimodal AI training data | Losing its protection |
| Mango Medical YC W26 startup building AI foundation models for planning orthopedic implant surgery | Losing its protection |
| Mantis Early-stage startup building AI digital twins of humans from health data | Losing its protection |
| Martini AI video production workspace with camera control and editing for pro filmmakers | Losing its protection |
| Maven Maven builds payment capture infrastructure so voice AI agents can take card payments over calls | Losing its protection |
| Menza AI data analyst that connects to a brand's tools and answers DTC growth questions | Losing its protection |
| Milliray UK startup building mmWave radar to detect and track small drones | Losing its protection |
| Moda Moda builds a continual learning and observability layer for AI agents | Losing its protection |
| Moritz AI-native law firm for startups, flat-fee same-day contracts via AI plus contracted lawyers | Losing its protection |
| Ndea Pre-product AGI lab betting program synthesis beats pure scaling | Losing its protection |
| o11 Small YC startup building bespoke AI agents for financial firms inside Excel and Google Workspace | Losing its protection |
| OctaPulse Computer vision and robotics that automate fish quality grading on farms | Losing its protection |
| One Robot Builds world models for evaluating and training robot manipulation, pre-revenue, YC W26. | Losing its protection |
| Opalite Health AI speech-to-speech interpreter for doctor-patient conversations in real time | Losing its protection |
| OpenSpec Free open-source markdown spec framework that helps AI coding agents plan before they code | Losing its protection |
| Origami Robotics YC W26 startup building a direct-drive robotic hand and matching data-glove for robot manipulation | Losing its protection |
| Origin Origin is a 5-person startup building AI models to predict regulatory DNA for safer gene therapies | Losing its protection |
| Orthogonal Startup letting AI agents discover, call, and pay for third-party APIs automatically | Losing its protection |
| Ossus AI-native library system startup building cataloguing and ILS tools for schools | Losing its protection |
| Overdrive Health AI-native billing service that collects claims for ambulance companies. | Losing its protection |
| Oximy Oximy is a 4-person startup that discovers and governs shadow AI tool use across a company | Losing its protection |
| Oxus AI-native software that automates SOX and internal-audit workflows for companies | Losing its protection |
| Palus Finance Palus Finance sweeps idle startup cash into bonds for higher yield, no bank switch needed | Losing its protection |
| Panta Insurance AI-native brokerage that places hard-to-insure commercial risks (E&S market) | Losing its protection |
| Parameter AI agents that continuously red-team other AI systems for security holes | Losing its protection |
| Parameter (formerly Hex Security) AI agents that continuously hack a company's own systems to find security holes before attackers do | Losing its protection |
| Patientdesk.ai AI voice agent and booking automation for dental practice front desks | Losing its protection |
| Pax Historia AI-powered historical grand-strategy game with 35K daily active users | Losing its protection |
| Payna AI agent that handles licensing and compliance filings for regulated companies | Losing its protection |
| Perfectly AI-native recruiting agency that sources, screens, and books candidates for startups | Losing its protection |
| Pollen Pollen builds AI agents that flag churn risk and draft outreach for customer success teams | Losing its protection |
| Prana AI chat app offering symptom checks plus paid $39 doctor video visits | Losing its protection |
| Proximitty Two-person YC startup building an AI system to underwrite commercial bank loans | Losing its protection |
| Reframe AI agent marketplace that chases suppliers and tracks POs for hardware startups | Losing its protection |
| Ritivel AI-native platform for drafting FDA/EMA regulatory submissions like CSRs, CTDs, INDs, BLAs | Losing its protection |
| RoboDock Builds robots that clean, charge, and service depots for self-driving vehicle fleets | Losing its protection |
| Rubric AI Startup building expert-verified rubrics and benchmarks so AI labs can check model answers | Losing its protection |
| Ruma Care Software that automates prior authorization for biologic infusion clinics | Losing its protection |
| RunAnywhere Makes fast on-device AI inference tools for Apple Silicon and Qualcomm chips | Losing its protection |
| Sazabi AI platform that reads production logs to find and fix software bugs automatically | Losing its protection |
| Scheduling Wizard Outsourced scheduling service that runs GME and attending calendars for teaching hospitals | Losing its protection |
| Servo7 Servo7 builds robots that unload shipping containers in warehouses | Losing its protection |
| Shofo Shofo scrapes and labels web video into training datasets for AI labs | Losing its protection |
| shortkit SDK letting consumer apps embed TikTok-style short-video feeds | Losing its protection |
| Sila Sila is a YC W26 startup building agent-native chat meant to replace Slack | Losing its protection |
| Sponge Wallet and payment infrastructure so AI agents can hold and spend money on their own. | Losing its protection |
| SpotPay SpotPay is a stablecoin wallet and card app pitched as a global bank account | Losing its protection |
| Stilta AI agent that finds and monetizes patents companies forgot they had | Losing its protection |
| Strand AI Builds AI models that predict missing patient biology data for pharma trials | Losing its protection |
| Tepali AI-native software system for medspas and aesthetics practices, built by a two-person team | Losing its protection |
| Terranox AI Startup using AI and geoscience data to find uranium deposits worth mining | Losing its protection |
| The Token Company Startup selling an API that compresses LLM prompts to cut token costs | Losing its protection |
| Travo AI system that crawls, emails, and calls to build data on RV parks and mobile home parks | Losing its protection |
| Valence Unified terminal that lets traders route bets across Kalshi, Polymarket, and other markets | Losing its protection |
| Valgo Builds simulation-based risk models to help insurers price physical AI like robots and AVs | Losing its protection |
| Verdex Two-person startup verifying crop insurance claims with satellite imagery and AI | Losing its protection |
| Visibl Semiconductors Two-person startup building an AI coordination layer for faster custom chip design | Losing its protection |
| Voltair Startup building self-charging drones and charging networks to inspect power lines for utilities | Losing its protection |
| Voxel Energy Builds off-grid solar and second-life battery microgrids to power AI data centers | Losing its protection |
| Zatanna Turns legacy software backends into APIs so AI agents can use them directly | Losing its protection |
| ZeroSettle SDK letting mobile apps bill users directly, skipping Apple/Google store fees | Losing its protection |
| Aemon Early-stage startup selling forward-deployed AI engineers who run evolutionary code search for R&D teams | Little protection left |
| Agentic Fabriq Two-person YC startup building identity and access control for AI agents | Little protection left |
| Alt-X Early-stage venue for trading shares of venture-backed startups before they go public | Little protection left |
| BaseFrame App that scans email, Slack, and docs to flag tasks AI could automate | Little protection left |
| Captain Two-person startup selling managed RAG search over a company's cloud files | Little protection left |
| Cardboard Agentic video editor where users cut and remix footage by chatting with an AI agent | Little protection left |
| Cardinal AI platform that runs automated outbound prospecting and sequencing for startups | Little protection left |
| Carrot Labs Carrot Labs (SuperPenguin) tracks and attributes AI spend across every LLM provider for engineering teams. | Little protection left |
| Confluence Labs Two-person YC lab building AI that learns efficiently from scarce scientific data | Little protection left |
| Eos AI Two-person startup building an autonomous data and admin OS for hospitals | Little protection left |
| Fern Two-person startup building RL training environments for robotics AI models | Little protection left |
| Fission AI Solo-founder maker of OpenSpec, an open-source spec framework for AI coding agents | Little protection left |
| Fort Fort is a YC-backed wrist wearable that auto-detects strength exercises and rep failure | Little protection left |
| Forum A two-person startup building an exchange where people trade contracts on attention and virality. | Little protection left |
| GRU Space Early-stage startup building a lunar hotel from regolith-brick habitats | Little protection left |
| IncidentFox Two-person YC W26 startup building an AI agent that triages and fixes production incidents | Little protection left |
| Instinct A trading app that routes crypto perps orders through Hyperliquid's exchange. | Little protection left |
| Klaus AI Hosted, security-wrapped version of the open-source OpenClaw AI agent | Little protection left |
| Lucent AI that watches session replays on PostHog and files bug tickets | Little protection left |
| Mendral AI DevOps engineer that auto-fixes broken CI/CD pipelines, built on Claude | Little protection left |
| Polymorph AI engine that personalizes in-app content and messaging for consumer apps | Little protection left |
| Q2Q AI agent for PE deal sourcing; wound down a month after launch | Little protection left |
| RamAIn YC W26 startup building AI agents that click and type through legacy software UIs | Little protection left |
| Remix AI app that turns your voice notes, photos, and texts into ready social posts | Little protection left |
| Ressl AI Early-stage startup building AI voice agents for home service trades businesses | Little protection left |
| Samora AI Samora AI builds multilingual voice agents that automate CRM, support and collections calls | Little protection left |
| Sentrial Sentrial watches AI agents in production and flags failures before users hit them | Little protection left |
| Sitefire A YC W26 startup helping brands get cited by AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity | Little protection left |
| Skillsync Startup building shared session memory and skill sharing for AI coding agents | Little protection left |
| Sonarly Two-person YC startup building an AI agent that triages and fixes production alerts | Little protection left |
| Sparkles Sparkles lets non-engineers assign coding tasks to AI agents on GitHub repos | Little protection left |
| Supafax Two-person startup selling an AI layer for drafting, triage, and scheduling in Gmail and Outlook | Little protection left |
| Syntropy YC-backed app that turns specs into PRDs and parallel coding agents for complex tasks | Little protection left |
| Talking Computers Two-person YC startup building AI agents that auto-optimize GPU kernels and inference speed | Little protection left |
| Terminal Use Deployment platform for filesystem-based AI agents, from YC W26 | Little protection left |
| Traverse Traverse builds RL training environments for tasks AI can't easily verify | Little protection left |
| Unifold Developer API letting on-chain apps accept multi-chain crypto deposits | Little protection left |
| Vela AI agent that coordinates multi-party scheduling over email, text, WhatsApp | Little protection left |
Questions people ask
- Which YC Winter 2026 startups are most likely to survive?
- The stronger positions in this batch are companies like ARC Prize Foundation, General Legal, and 10x Science, which serve a specific customer or role that hasn't been absorbed by a bigger platform. They show low pressure and real specialization rather than competing head to head with a free tool.
- What percentage of YC W26 startups are struggling?
- Out of 209 companies assessed, 123 are losing its protection and only 3 are holding steady with caveats. That means most of the batch faces real risk, which lines up with how tough the odds normally are for very young startups.
- Are AI coding tool startups in this batch doomed?
- The ones built specifically around spec-driven planning, like OpenSpec and Fission AI, are under heavy pressure because GitHub, AWS, and the coding agents themselves now ship that feature for free. Startups doing something narrower than a feature that big platforms want to own have better odds.
- Which YC W26 startup faces the toughest competition?
- Forum, an attention-contracts trading startup, faces the toughest named competition: Polymarket launched an identical product with far more liquidity and regulatory clearance the same year Forum was building its version.
- Are any YC W26 space startups doing well?
- GRU Space, building a lunar hotel from regolith bricks, faces pressure from NASA-backed programs and Axiom Space that already hold institutional lunar-construction budgets, and Beyond Reach Labs faces a competing product Rocket Lab already shipped. Neither shows strong footing yet.
- What YC W26 startups have real openings with less competition?
- Squid's live grid modeling tool, Panta's insurance brokerage for hard-to-place risk, and 10x Science's protein-data platform for pharma all show low pressure and no visible rival taking their customers yet.
What to watch
- Whether Fort ships actual hardware before Whoop's software update reaches its full installed base
- Whether Chamber, Agentic Fabriq, or Parameter land a first named paying customer
- Whether ARC Prize Foundation or General Legal announce a government or enterprise contract
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