From the AI breakthroughs of the last few months, a wave of new startup opportunities have been unlocked. Here are some of the ideas we think will be especially interesting to build now: ycombinator.com/rfs
A Secure AI App Store @garrytan There is a small window today for a startup to create an AI App Store that provides computer use APIs and local LLaMA versioning with secure privacy controls, discovery, and payments. We hope you might build it.
Compliance and Audit @t_blom 4 million people in the US & Europe work in compliance & audit. LLMs will automate the testing that these folks currently do by hand: spotting anomalies in data, identifying incomplete records, or highlighting contradictory policies.
DocuSign 2.0 @mwseibel There is an opportunity with AI to finally make the process of filling out and signing documents delightful.
Browser/Computer Automation @snowmaker AI agents can now browse the web and use desktop applications. It means that every website and every app now effectively has an API, and any workflow that people can do on a computer can be automated.
AI Personal Staff for Everyone @dflieb The world’s richest people employ large staffs of humans, like tax accountants, lawyers, money managers, personal trainers, and even private doctors. AI will soon be good enough to do all these jobs for everyone.
Devtools for AI Agents @dessaigne AI agents are the next wave: autonomous tools that reason, decide, and amplify human productivity. We’re funding startups building devtools for agents, whether you’re creating agent builders or building blocks to perform complex tasks.
The Future of Software Engineering @koomen AI will bring the cost of building software down to zero, but this means we’ll need MORE human developers, not fewer. We’d like to fund startups building tools for this future.
AI Coding Agent for Hardware Optimized Code @sdianahu AI hardware is still constrained by software. However, with reasoning models like Deepseek R1 or OpenAI o1 and o3, AI could generate hardware-optimized code that rivals—or surpasses—human CUDA code.
@ycombinator @daltonc @gitlab We would love to interview for YC! Checkout out new demo!!
@ycombinator @daltonc @gitlab We would love to interview for YC! Checkout out new demo!!
@ycombinator @daltonc @gitlab @supabase would’ve been a stronger example in 2025 :)
