Full-stack AI companies Jared Friedman If you build a great AI accountant, why sell it to legacy accounting firms when you could start an AI accounting firm and beat them? We think founders will increasingly choose to do just that, and we're excited to fund more of these full-stack... AI companies.show more

2025 is shaping up to be the "year of AI agents". We've put together a list of startup ideas that we think are especially promising— some draw attention to trends that are already in full swing, and some of them are where we think things are going next.

More Design Founders @aaron_epstein As AI tools make coding easier, great design and taste matter more than ever. That's why more designers should become founders. Don't just design products – create companies.

Voice AI @gustaf Phone calls with businesses haven’t changed in decades—until now. Voice AI bots, powered by LLMs, are finally as good as humans. It’s the autonomous car moment for voice.

AI for Scientific Advancement @sdianahu AI is transforming how physical things are made. Many scientific tools haven’t changed in decades, but test-time compute is now enabling new startups to solve complex problems in fields like chemistry, biology, and materials science.

AI Personal Assistant @t_blom It’s high time we had AI personal assistants. Imagine an AI that has perfect understanding of your emails, projects, and scheduling preferences — and can take actions on your behalf. Apply to YC if you’re working on this idea!

AI Personal Tutor for Everyone @harjtaggar The latest multimodal and reasoning models make it possible to create an AI personal tutor that’s capable of explaining complicated concepts to anyone who’s interested in learning them. This could really change the world. We’d love to see you apply to YC if you’re working on this idea.

Healthcare AI @gustaf US healthcare spend is now more than $4T a year, but over $1T of that is spent on manual admin tasks. New agents and LLMs can automate this.

AI Residential Security @bosmeny Legacy home security companies are a $20B joke. Meanwhile, AI is already preventing crimes in office buildings–think facial recognition, loitering alerts, even virtual guards to yell at intruders. We think the first startup to bring mass-market AI to consumer home security can win the market and make everyone safer.

Software Tools for Robots @sdianahu Robotics hasn't had its ChatGPT moment yet, but we think it’s almost here. With the rapid improvements in foundation models, it's finally possible to make robots that have human-level perception and judgment. That’s been the missing piece. We're interested in funding people building software tools to help others make robots.

Internal Agent Builder @koomen Soon, all companies will have one thing in common: every employee will build agents to automate the repetitive parts of their jobs. We’d like to fund founders working on the infrastructure they’ll use to do that: internal agent builders.

The Future of Education @t_blom If you fast-forward 10 or 20 years, it’s impossible to believe that education is still going to be done in the same way it is today. Do you want to figure out what the future of education looks like? We’d love to see a YC application.

AI Research Labs @snowmaker There are still many unsolved problems in AI, and we think the world needs more AI research labs working on them. Some people think that YC doesn't fund open-ended research, but as the first investors in OpenAI, we are extremely comfortable doing exactly that.

AI Voice Assistants for Email @bosmeny Let’s talk. What if, every day while you drive to work, you could get to inbox zero – with just your voice? Siri was supposed to be this! But Apple’s stumbles may have created the perfect opening for an ambitious startup to build the voice assistant of the future. And we think email might just be the perfect launchpad.

AI for Personal Finance @gustaf Most people struggle with personal finance. LLMs can fix that—by offering personalized, unbiased advice at scale.

If you’re interested in working on any of these ideas, you should apply to YC. The deadline for applying to the summer batch is May 13th: