The last few years were about proving what AI can do. Now, it's about building with it. We've put together a new list of startup ideas we're especially excited about— ideas that treat AI not as a feature, but as a foundation. ycombinator.com/rfs

Retraining Workers for the AI Economy @harjtaggar The AI revolution needs more than researchers and engineers. It also needs electricians and welders for the physical buildout. We're looking to fund startups creating AI-powered vocational training for the jobs that make the AI economy possible.

@ycombinator Building with AI from the bottoms up is the key. Everything we do @growthterminal is based on AI, from onboarding to scraping. That's why we're the best content creation and reply product out there

@ycombinator made this w/ @readybase for everyone's quick reference!

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@ycombinator Been building with AI for months now. The real challenge isn't the tech, it's finding problems actually worth solving with it.

@ycombinator Could be a touch more specific with this one...

@ycombinator AI video generation as an input excites me so much as a gamer/binge-watcher. Def my fav request of the batch by FAR.

@ycombinator curious what you're seeing in the "AI employees" space building mario, erika, ava as actual AI employees that work in production, not just chatbots the pattern seems to be moving from "AI helps with tasks" to "AI owns entire workflows" where are you seeing the most traction?

@ycombinator Does this mean that startups not based on AI are not considered?

@ycombinator last batch was all about cursor for xyz

@ycombinator this is great, can't wait for humanoid robots / semi-humanoid robots helping with training / upskilling

@ycombinator exactly. mario, erika, ava - none of them exist without treating AI as infrastructure, not a feature

@ycombinator NGL, Fall RFS is potato

@ycombinator time to apply to YC as a solo founder? 👀

@ycombinator You better be taking more solo founders then

@ycombinator Check ✅ 👀

@ycombinator the shift from ai-as-feature to ai-as-foundation mirrors the deeper transformation from building on top of technology to building with technology as the substrate, where the most interesting companies will emerge from treating intelligence itself as infrastructure.

@ycombinator 👀

@ycombinator Should I turn this into a landing page? I can do it in 3 minutes.

@ycombinator Grok 3, xAI's newest AI model released in February 2025, emphasizes truthfulness, usefulness, and curiosity, and leverages real-time directly from X, making it useful for current events and programming questions while also allowing users to upload pictures for analysis.

@ycombinator What’s the deadlines

@ycombinator Guess what 2-3 ideas are similar to what I have thought about and started building

@ycombinator Bro I'm too lazy to apply you can send me the check if you want

@ycombinator Sawa basi.

@ycombinator LLMs as the foundation will be the new default very soon, if not already. They are what databases were when those first released.

@ycombinator 🙏 this is a gem 💎

@ycombinator everything starts with branding. that’s why i’m here. The normal suite will begin with launching an ai for branding. ensuring everything from images, text, (video soon) is created on brand. the possibilities are endless 👀

@ycombinator It is suffocating to see the leader of innovation is telling founders what to invent again. What makes a great incubator or accelerator is the ability to cherry pick the potential founder(s) but not ‘hire’ founders to work on projects you like.

@ycombinator deal, 10p $100b

@ycombinator Thanks @myronkoch let's get it!!

@ycombinator Curious if more solo founders will be selected.