As usual, Y Combinator came up with segments that are worth investing:

1. Cursor for Product Managers
2. AI-Native Hedge Funds
3. AI-Native Agencies
4. Stablecoin Financial Services
5. AI for Government
6. Modern Metal Mills
7. AI Guidance for Physical Work 8. Large Spatial Models 9. Infra for Government Fraud Hunters 10. Make LLMs Easy to Train

If you're applying, reply below with what you're building so we can cheer you on!

If you're doing a startup and not applying, why aren't you applying?

At YC, investors outlined 8 startups across space, AI, gaming, and agriculture (most of them want to bet on futuristic ideas, e.g. space), and these sparked interest in funding them.

This was the pick:

1. Beyond Reach Labs satellite solar arrays that expand from table-size to football-field size in orbit
   Est. valuation: ~$100M+

2. Byteport next-gen file transfer protocol
   Est. valuation: ~ $30M

3. Hex Security AI agents that continuously hack your system to find vulnerabilities (Rev.: $1M+ run-rate in 8 weeks)
   Est. valuation: ~$100M+

4. Grazemate autonomous drones that herd cattle, track weight, and monitor land
   Est. valuation: ~ $30M

5. GRU Space moon factory turning lunar soil into buildings (starting with a moon hotel)
   Est. valuation: ~$100M+

6. Luel marketplace for real-world human data (video/audio) to train AI models (Rev.: ~$2M ARR in 6 weeks)
   Est. valuation: ~$100M+

7. Pax Historia AI strategy game where players rewrite history (e.g. Rome never falls) 35K daily users
   Est. valuation: ~ $30M

8. Stilta AI agent for patent lawyers (search + analyse IP faster, cheaper)
   Est. valuation: ~ $30M

I have come across several statements such as: a single person cannot raise money on their own (you need to be in a team of at least 2 people), it is not worth it because there is pressure on you, etc.

• What is your experience with raising money?

• What did it give you, and who did you raise it from?

• What do you think helped you to a large extent to get the raise?

me and my co-founder are building an AI agent because at our last startup we just couldn t keep up with support.

we tried every chatbot out there. they all felt robotic. customers hated it.

hiring more people was too slow + too $$$

so we put together this ai chatbot (think intercom fin but deeper) that trains on your old tickets, learns your tone, doesn t hallucinate, and can actually answer stuff like a real support rep.

3 days ago, I was wondering what the future of universities would be in this AI world (and education in general).

I didn't know that YCombinator was going to bring an alternative solution:

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A week ago, Y Combinator held its Summer 2025 Demo Day in San Francisco, showcasing over 160 startups and highlighting 9 highly focused ones.

TL;DR: The most trending were AI-focused, specifically AI agents.

Last year @Clustr looked healthy with 10,000+ active users, 10-minute sessions and $20,000 in MRR. Yet users churned quickly traction didn t equal stickiness. After hundreds of growth experiments we finally pulled the plug, trimmed the team from 12 to 2, and plunged into pivot hell.

Dozens of dead ends later, I flew to San Francisco hunting for answers. On a quick walk in Dogpatch, Tom Blomfield (Monzo Bank/GoCardless) hit me with the line that finally cut through the fog: