State of the radar
12,012 companies tracked across the YC directory, Techstars and a16z speedrun, covering ten YC batches from W24 to S26. The headline is that the agent wave has crested rather than broken: Vertical AI agents are still the single largest cluster at 25.8% of the latest batch and 546 companies since W24, but they lost 3.2pp over the last two batches — the sharpest decline on the board. Agent infrastructure is flat at 16.6%. Everything gaining share sits closer to atoms, money or regulated industries: robotics, fintech, compute, health and defense. Read it as founders rotating from "software that does a job" toward "systems that operate in the physical or legal world," where distribution is harder but incumbents are slower.
Rising
- Robotics and physical world (13.1% latest, +2.0pp, 128 total) — the largest structural shift: cheap perception plus AI control is making hardware startups tractable for small teams again.
- Fintech (4.4% latest, +1.8pp, 96 total) — a revival driven less by neobanks than by agents that need to move, verify and reconcile money.
- AI infra and compute (7.4% latest, +1.7pp, 82 total) — inference cost and capacity remain unsolved enough to support new entrants below the hyperscaler layer.
- Healthcare and bio (5.7% latest, +1.7pp, 74 total) — steady climb into workflows where documentation and staffing shortages are the actual product.
Crowded
- Vertical AI agents — 546 companies since W24 and still a quarter of the latest batch even after a 3.2pp drop. Assume every obvious vertical already has three entrants.
- Agent infrastructure — 255 companies, no growth (-0.1pp), and 198 recent companies already sitting under the "Self-Maintaining APIs" request. Supply has outrun the demand signal.
- Developer tools — 154 companies and -1.6pp; 85 recent companies map to "A Cloud for Small Software." Hard to differentiate without an unusual wedge.
Open windows
- The Future of American Defense — thinnest supply on the board (37 companies) against a rising cluster (+1.5pp). Procurement knowledge is the moat, not the model.
- Proving You're Human — 38 companies in Security and compliance, a cluster that is actually shrinking (-0.7pp). Personhood and provenance are becoming a requirement for every consumer surface.
- AI-Native Compliance Infrastructure — same 38-company base. The audit and evidence layer for AI systems is being demanded faster than anyone is building it.
Idea candidates
- A liveness and provenance layer for inbound business calls and video meetings, sold to lenders and recruiters who now receive synthetic applicants.
- An evidence-collection service that continuously maps a company's AI systems to changing regulatory controls and produces audit-ready packets for a single regulated vertical.
- A labeling and simulation pipeline for defense sensor data — maritime, drone, ground — run under the clearance and data-handling constraints primes will not touch.