New startup ideas · AI and software · AI infra and compute
startup idea
Wattlot
Small businesses with spare power host inference pods; we hold the permits.
Wattlot is a marketplace where small industrial businesses with unused electrical service and yard space, machine shops, grain handlers, cold stores, rural ISPs, host containerized inference pods and get paid for delivered compute hours.
- Marketplace
- Small business
- $100B+ market
- Creates a new category
- US first
3/5
venture judge
9
similar startups, last 2 years (33 all-time)
99%
of 4 nearest real companies still alive
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Test it before you build it
$1,800 · 5 weeks · 25 prospects
For under $2,000 and five weeks, prove that small industrial owners with spare 480V service will hand over utility bills and put down $500 refundable reservations to host a paying inference pod in their yard.
1Focus group: who and where
Owner or general manager of a machine shop, grain elevator, or cold storage business with 10 to 50 employees in rural electric cooperative territory in Iowa or Minnesota, with 480V three-phase service sized for peak loads they no longer run and a monthly demand charge they complain about
where to find 25 · LinkedIn Sales Navigator filtered to owners and GMs of machining, grain handling, and cold storage companies with 10-50 employees in Iowa and Minnesota; National Tooling and Machining Association local chapter meetings; GEAPS (Grain Elevator and Processing Society) member network; WISPA member list for rural ISPs; and the IMTS show floor in Chicago in September 2026 where thousands of shop owners walk the aisles
2Sell first, build later
A first-cohort hosting agreement sold before any pod is built: Wattlot files the interconnection pre-application and permits, commissions one containerized pod on the owner's slab within 120 days of site approval, and pays a guaranteed floor of $1,500 per month plus per-hour upside for 24 months
the ask · $500 refundable site reservation now; at commissioning, a $2,500 one-time permitting and commissioning fee netted from the first payouts, plus a 20% take rate on gross hosting revenue
a real yes · A real yes is a $500 deposit paid through the Stripe link and 12 months of utility bills in hand. Not a yes: 'sounds interesting, call me after harvest', a waitlist email with no bill, or a co-op that likes the idea but will not put an introduction in writing.
3Small experiments
The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.
1. Twenty spare-capacity owner calls
$200 · 14 days
Call 20 owners with a one-line pitch: 'You are paying demand charges on service capacity you do not use; we place a containerized compute pod in your yard, handle every permit and utility filing, and pay you monthly per delivered compute hour.' Ask for 12 months of utility bills to size the opportunity; the bill share is the commitment signal, not the compliment.
keep going if · 8 of 20 owners send utility bills within a week of the call
2. Payout calculator landing page
$600 · 21 days
Put up a one-page site with a hosting payout calculator (enter service size and average load, see estimated $1,500 to $4,000 per month per pod) and a waitlist form that requires a utility bill upload to join. Drive traffic with $400 of Google Ads on demand-charge and commercial-electric-bill search terms geo-fenced to Iowa and Minnesota, plus direct links sent in the call follow-ups.
keep going if · 10 bill uploads from 40 form starts; a waitlist signup without a bill counts as nothing
3. Co-op channel pre-check
$100 · 21 days
Book calls with member services or key accounts managers at 5 Iowa or Minnesota electric distribution cooperatives (found via the NRECA co-op directory) and ask two questions: would aggregated behind-the-meter compute load on member sites need a new rate class or filing, and would the co-op introduce Wattlot to commercial members if it enrolls the pods in their load management program. This tests the stated regulatory risk and the channel in one pass.
keep going if · 2 of 5 co-ops say existing commercial rate tariffs cover it and 1 agrees in writing to introduce members after a reference site exists
4. Reservation deposit close
$100 · 14 days
Offer every owner who shared bills a first-cohort reservation: $500 refundable deposit via a Stripe Payment Link that buys a site electrical survey, the interconnection pre-application filed with their co-op, and a locked payout rate for 24 months. Run the close on a 20-minute call with a two-page term sheet.
keep going if · 5 of the bill-sharing owners pay the $500 deposit
4Collect a deposit up front
Tesla took $1,000 refundable reservations for the Model 3 and $100 for the Cybertruck before building either: the deposit is the measurement, not the revenue.
$500
per prospect, refundable
how · Refundable reservation via a Stripe Payment Link, paid by the business owner after signing a two-page reservation term sheet; the deposit converts to a credit against the $2,500 commissioning fee set up: Stripe Payment Links ↗
what it reserves · One of the first ten pod slots, a completed site electrical survey, the interconnection pre-application filed with their co-op, and a payout rate locked for 24 months
refund · Refunded in full within 5 business days if the site fails the electrical survey, if the co-op filing is denied, or on request any time before pod delivery.
target · 5 paid $500 deposits from 20 owner conversations within 35 days
Go: build it if
5 deposits paid, 8+ bill shares, and at least 1 co-op confirming existing tariffs cover the load with a written willingness to introduce members; that proves supply will sign before hardware exists and the permitting wedge is real.
Kill: stop if
Fewer than 3 bill shares after 30 owner conversations, 0 deposits after 10 closes attempted, or 4 of 5 co-ops saying aggregated compute load needs a new rate case; any of those means the supply side or the regulatory wedge is not there.
Would you run this test?
One tap. The yes-share feeds the Demand pillar of this idea's score; nobody sees who answered.
Budgets are out-of-pocket estimates for a team of one to three, US market. Size the deposit to the deal, and check the terms before taking money in a regulated line.
Scorecard
One score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its potential for 100x, with competition measured relative to every other idea in the catalog. Recent startup trends first, government priorities second.
71
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 43.5 x 1.64
Active
competition: more crowded than 69% of ideas · headwind x0.65
+3.1
government priorities, secondary (22 matching grants)
Trend
72
Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.
- Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)68
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector68
- Sector direction (live batch)100
- 2026 trend analyst50
Demand
52
Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.
- YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
- Operator judge: real pain25
100x potential
64
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Venture judge50
- Market size axis100
- Moat axis80
- Neighbours still alive30
- Technologist judge75
Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 272 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were spare, power, host, inference, pods, hold, marketplace, industrial.
The idea in full
- What
- Wattlot is a marketplace where small industrial businesses with unused electrical service and yard space, machine shops, grain handlers, cold stores, rural ISPs, host containerized inference pods and get paid for delivered compute hours. Wattlot owns the hard part: the interconnection agreements, air and noise permits, utility demand-response enrollment and NERC-adjacent compliance that a single small business cannot obtain, plus the pod hardware and thermal design. Hosts are the paying side, giving up a take rate on payouts and a fee for the permitting and commissioning package.
- Why now
- Expanse (YC X26) is already monetizing wasted GPU capacity and Zibra Labs (YC X26) is building a distributed runtime for AI workloads at scale, so the software to use scattered supply exists; YC's Fall 2026 Compute at Sea request and Atomarine's floating nuclear data centers show how far builders will go for interconnected power, while the cheapest unused megawatts sit behind small business meters on land.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- Rural electric cooperative territory in one state: sign twenty existing commercial members with 480V service and idle load, using the co-op as the channel and the single permitting jurisdiction as the template.
- Path to 100x
- Data center capacity is a $100B+ annual build, and every gigawatt Wattlot assembles from small business sites is capacity that never enters a five-year interconnection queue. The regulatory moat compounds: permit templates, co-op agreements and demand-response enrollments per jurisdiction are slow to copy, and once a state's small business power is contracted, the second entrant finds no supply left.
- Ceiling
- Pod economics stay hostage to hardware depreciation and site-by-site permitting cost, so the business scales linearly with field crews instead of with the network.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Expanse unlocks wasted GPU capacity that already exists; Wattlot creates supply by placing hardware behind small business meters, and its defensibility is the permit and interconnection stack rather than the scheduler. Zibra Labs and OpenRelay supply the hardware-agnostic runtime that makes such fragmented capacity sellable.
- Main risk
- Utilities and state regulators classify aggregated behind-the-meter compute as a new load class and stall approvals for years.
Five judges
Each judge scores every idea in the catalog with a named rubric; the venture judge decides whether a card is shown at all (4-5 is venture-grade).
Venture investor
3/5
Permit stack per jurisdiction is a real moat, but the card admits pod economics may scale linearly with field crews and depreciation.
Bootstrapper
1/5
Pod hardware, interconnection agreements and per-jurisdiction air and noise permits burn far past $500k before one compute hour is billed.
Operator
2/5
The grain handler with idle 480V service pays a commissioning fee for a benefit that arrives only after permits clear, which is the wrong side paying.
Technologist
4/5
Pod thermal design plus per-jurisdiction interconnection and NERC-adjacent permit stacks is slow, physical expertise that a scheduler company cannot copy.
Risk
3/5
Permits, interconnection agreements and co-op contracts are genuine licensed footing, but one state regulator creating a new load class stalls approvals for years.
trends
3/5
Same 2025-2026 power scarcity as Swingbus, but multi-year site-by-site permitting means the window likely closes before behind-the-meter pods reach scale.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (spare, power, host, inference, pods, hold, marketplace, industrial): 33 all-time, 9 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
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The generator's reference companies
Real companies the model named as closest when it wrote the card, with their fate. A check mark is a company the radar could verify in its directory.
Public money in this direction
US federal grants, SBIR/STTR awards and open opportunities from the radar's public-money feed, matched to the idea's terms; the sector totals give the context.
8
grants and programs matching the idea
225
startup-relevant grants in AI infra and compute
$271M
awarded in the sector, tracked
8
opportunities open now in the sector
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Privacy-Preserving Internet of Things (IoT) for Clinical and Home Health Monitoringawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-20
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Glass Anodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries used with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Autonomous Systemsawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-19
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Cross-Platform Wearable Interface for Spatial and Ambient Computingawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-17
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of an electroacoustic sensing technology using speakers as sensorsawardhigh relevance
National Science Foundation · I-Corps · $50K · posted 2026-08-10
NIH / NCATS · SBIR phase I · $350K · posted 2026-07-01
- Next-Gen Oral Therapeutics for Concomitant Clostridioides difficile Infection and IBDawardhigh relevance
NIH / NIAID · SBIR phase I · $314K · posted 2025-08-13
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Hybrid Photonic/Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) Control Architecture for Scalable Superconducting Qubit Systemsawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · TIP-CHIPS KTA-3 Quantum · $50K · posted 2026-08-17
- Next Generation Satellite Lidar Sensing, Neural Compression, and Accelerated Neural Inferenceawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · CSCS: Circuits and Systems for · $536K · posted 2026-08-11
Market signal
What the radar sees in AI infra and compute: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
AI infra and compute · 10 → 33 → 57 → 61 → 52 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 98% aliveYC S26: 18 in this cluster, 8% of the batch (was 4% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 117 YC companies here: 3 acquired, 2 shut down, 25 rewrote their pitch
Design attributes
The card is one cell of a designed set: every axis below was chosen before the text was written, and the text had to realize it.
- Buyer
- Small business
- Business model
- Marketplace
- Path to 100x
- Creates a new category
- Market size
- $100B+ market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-heavy (hardware, bio, infra)
- Speed to revenue
- Revenue in 1-3 years
- Technical depth
- Deep tech: ML, hardware, bio
- Go-to-market
- Partners and channels
- Moat
- License or regulatory moat
- Geography
- US first
- Regulation
- Heavily regulated
- Vibe
- Boring business
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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