YC's Requests for Startups
Request for Startups: Y Combinator wants an agent summer.
Key takeaways from the data on the companies *already* operating across the categories outlined in YC's Summer 2025 Request for Startups:
1) "The next OpenAI" – AI Research Labs are hot but... only if you can hire the required specialized expertise that most founding teams lack. The technical barrier creates natural defensibility for those who can attract the right talent.
2) The Internal Agent Builders sector has the second highest average company health (Mosaic 496) but one of the lowest average commercial maturity scores (2.2). The infrastructure layer remains underbuilt relative to the attention that agents as a whole are receiving.
3) Everyone is building in and investing in Healthcare AI. Healthcare AI has seen the most early-stage investments this year (75 companies) and has the highest average commercial maturity (3.2). All this activity suggests oversaturation. Yes, healthcare remains an unsolved trillion-dollar problem, but there can only be so many companies that succeed... expect competition and consolidation ahead.
4) There is opportunity in the middle. Voice AI, AI Personal Assistants, and Software for Robots have seen balanced attention and new market entrants this year. Advancements and mega rounds at the foundational levels for these sectors (ex: ElevenLabs and Cartesia in voice, foundational model advancements for Personal Assistants, and projected $2.3B funding for humanoid robots in 2025) are laying a strong foundation for a wave of new companies.
5) Found/fund where the competition is least and the demand is clear. The bottom three sectors across education, tutoring, and residential security are also the most ripe for disruption. I still see yard signs for security systems. I still see kids doing times-tables on binder paper. I just overheard a wine-drunk group of parents complaining about how much they spent on SAT prep. The pain points are there and the competition isn't.
YC's Summer 2025 RFS isn't just about following the money or chasing the least crowded spaces – it highlights where technological readiness, market demand, and structural opportunity overlap. Many of these sectors are where the next wave of transformative AI companies will emerge.
Which sectors and companies are you watching most closely?