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Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, Silicon Valley has been consumed by the rush to build billion-dollar AI startups. Nowhere is that more true than at Y Combinator, the blue-chip startup accelerator that’s setting the blistering pace.
YC, founded in 2005, provides mentorship and a $500,000 seed investment to companies that are accepted. Over the last few years, this has resulted in a snowballing roster of companies developing AI agents, voice assistants, video production software, AI-native web browsers, and more—as long as they’re on the bleeding edge of tech’s principal obsession of the moment.
“All the smart kids of the Bay Area want to work on AI,” explains Luke Shiels, who founded the automated debugging tool Interfere during YC’s Summer 2025 batch.
While overlap is usually inevitable in accelerator programs, never in its 20-year history have so many YC startups been singularly devoted to one core area of tech. Going through YC’s startup directory reveals that of the 170 startups in the most recent summer batch 154 are AI startups.
