Artificial intelligence continues to boom at Y Combinator, and the Bay Area dominates the category in the accelerator's current cohort of startups.
There are 218 companies listed in the Mountain View accelerator's summer batch this year, according to its website. It's the smallest cohort YC has seen in three years, and about 45% smaller than its winter 2022 batch, which swelled to 402 companies.
Despite the smaller batch size, the Bay Area represents nearly three-quarters of the summer cohort and also dominates the AI category.
There are 126 companies in the batch that are tagged with "AI" or "artificial intelligence," according to YC's website, an increase of close to one-third compared to the winter batch earlier this year.
About 90% of them have founders that are based in the Bay Area, according to a Bay Area Inno analysis. There are also around four dozen companies building generative AI-related products and services, including three dozen Bay Area companies.
After AI, the most represented categories in the Bay Area include developer tools and data-related services, fintech and financial services, healthcare and biotech, consumer, sales and marketing and workplace and productivity.
The number of crypto and web3 startups has also steadily declined since the category peaked last summer at 21 companies, according to YC's website. Only three startups in the whole summer batch this year are building in crypto and web3, down from 10 in the winter batch.
The percentage of women founders represented in the current batch is around 16%, slightly up from the previous three batches but down from 21% in the summer 2021 cohort, according to YC's website. Hispanic and Latinx founders dropped to around 7% in this batch after hovering between 12% to 13% in the previous three cohorts. Black founders have remained flat at around 4% this year after reaching close to 8% last year.
Last year, Y Combinator also increased its standard investment to $500,000.
The cohort is the first one since the Covid-19 pandemic to have a 100% in-person session, YC said, and it is also planning an in-person, invite-only experience for its next Demo Day.
"Virtual Demo Day served us well for the last few years and we're planning to continue offering a way to watch it remotely … but there truly is no room like the one that YC can bring together for Demo Day," the company said.
The accelerator also said it received over 24,000 applications for this batch and had less than a 1% acceptance rate.
Last week, TechCrunch reported that YC removed one startup based in India, Medobed, from its summer batch due to "irregularities" and ethical concerns.
YC didn't respond to an immediate request for comment.
Here's a list of all 114 AI-related startups that are based in the Bay Area.
And here's a list of Bay Area startups that are building products and services in a few other popular categories. Many startups overlap across multiple industries.
Developer Tools and Data-Related Services:
Artie (San Francisco) — Jacqueline Cheong and Robin Tang
AutoEmber (San Francisco) — Ben Shumaker and Izak Fritz
Automorphic (San Francisco) — Govind Gnanakumar, Maaher Gandhi and Mahesh Natamai
Axilla (San Francisco) — Nicholas Charriere and Ben Reinhart
Baserun.ai (San Francisco) — Effy Zhang and Adam Ginzberg
CambioML (San Jose) — Rachel Hu and Jared Wilber
Cedalio (San Francisco) — Luciana Reznik and Guido Marucci Blas
Cedana (San Francisco) — Neel Master and Niranjan Ravichandra
Chatter (San Francisco) — Anish Agrawal and Kasyap Chakra
Continue (San Francisco) — Ty Dunn and Nate Sesti
Cyclone (Palo Alto) — Tony Yang and Haoyang Yu
Dioxus Labs (San Francisco) — Jonathan Kelley
FlowiseAI (San Francisco) — Henry Heng and Chung Yau Ong
Haven (San Francisco) — Justus Mattern and Konstantin Hohr
Hegel AI (San Francisco) — Steven Krawczyk and Kevin Tse
Metalware (San Francisco) — Ryan Chow and Andrew Nedea
Metoro (San Francisco) — Chris Battarbee and Tom Pointon
Neum AI (San Francisco) — David de Matheu and Kevin Cohen
Parea (San Francisco) — Joel Alexander and Joschka Braun
Quack AI (San Francisco) — F-G Fernandez
Silimate (Mountain View) — Ann Wu and Akash Levy
Fintech and Financial Services:
Accend (San Francisco/San Mateo) — Pranjal Daga, Yutong Pei and Joseph Zhou
Agentive (San Francisco/Palo Alto) — Daniel Alberson, Vidyasagar Ranganaboina and Kyle Saunders
Alguna (San Francisco/United Kingdom) — Aleks Đekić and Jamie MacLeod
Campfire (San Francisco/Seattle) — John Glasgow and Fernando San Martin
CandorIQ (San Francisco) — Haris Ikram and Sutthipong Thavisomboon
Cardinal Gray (San Francisco) — Jack Chapman, Muhammad Khattak and Grant Pease
Cascading AI (Palo Alto/New York) — Lukas Haffer and Isaiah Williams
CatX (San Francisco) — Benedict Altier and Lucas Schneider
CheqUPI (San Francisco/India) — Sudhanshu Shekhar and Manish Shukla
Decoda Health (San Francisco) — Daniyal Afzal and Kevin Cheng
Envelope (San Francisco) — Katelyn Strobel and Josh Cockrell Strobel
Every Inc. (San Francisco) — Rajeev Behera and Barry Peterson
Flex (San Francisco) — Sam O'Keefe and Miguel Toledo
Fynt (San Francisco/Bulgaria/United Kingdom) — Nick Gospodinov and Aleksandar Bonin
Gleam (San Francisco/Seattle) — Oliver Keh and Emeka Itegbe
Greenlite (San Francisco/Canada) — Will Lawrence and Alex Jin
Hidden Hand (San Francisco) — Bennett Cohen
Pointhound (San Francisco) — Jay Reno and Jake Malone
Respaid (San Francisco) — John Banner
Trayd (San Francisco/New York) — Anna Berger and Cara Kessler
VaultPay (San Francisco/Canada/Congo) — Ntambwa Basambombo and Christel Ilaka
Healthcare and Biotech:
Andromeda Surgical (San Francisco) — Nick Damiano and Kartik Tiwari
Cair Health (Palo Alto) — Shehbaz Virk and Ishan Balakrishnan
Decoda Health (San Francisco) — Daniyal Afzal and Kevin Cheng
Elythea (San Jose) — Reetam Ganguli and Rishik Lad
Flair Health (San Francisco) — Diva Sharma and Shobha Dasari
Flex (San Francisco) — Sam O'Keefe and Miguel Toledo
Gleam (San Francisco/Seattle) — Oliver Keh and Emeka Itegbe
Health Harbor (San Francisco) — Alan Liu, Nathan Amin and Gloria Wu
MantleBio (San Francisco) — Emily Damato and Madeline Schade
MediSearch (San Francisco/United Kingdom) — Eduard Oravkin and Michal Pándy
Obento Health (San Francisco) — Naxin Wang and Rodrigo Gutierrez
Ohmic Biosciences (Alameda) — PJ Steiner and Matthew Bedewitz
Pandan (Redwood City) — Ihsaan Patel and Edward Tiong
Shasta Health (San Francisco) — Srinjoy Majumdar and Pransu Dash
Simbie Health (San Francisco/New York) — Natalia Khosla, Rachel O’Driscoll and Natalia Perina
Sohar Health (San Francisco/United Kingdom/Denmark) — Ashish Mandavia and Lucas Gordon
Stellar Sleep (San Francisco) — George Wang and Edrei Chua
Synaptiq (San Francisco/San Mateo/D.C.) — Ryan Phelps, Jacob Caccamo and Kevin Bastoul
Wattson Health (San Francisco/New York/Miami) — Justin Spitz and Cleophus Robinson IV
Consumer:
Advent (San Francisco) — Jarrett Perkins and Eric Wang
Can of Soup (San Francisco) — Gabriel Birnbaum and Eric Meier
Cardinal Gray (San Francisco) — Jack Chapman, Muhammad Khattak and Grant Pease
CheqUPI (San Francisco/India) — Sudhanshu Shekhar and Manish Shukla
Envelope (San Francisco) — Katelyn Strobel and Josh Cockrell Strobel
Glade (San Francisco) — Daniel Fang and Aaron Lee
Glaze (San Francisco) — Maggie Zhang, Savannah Liu and Pearl Li
Infobot (Oakland) — Justin Harvey, Eduardo Faraday and Orestis Lykouropoulos
Khoj (San Francisco/India) — Debanjum Singh Solanky and Saba Imran
Martin (Sunnyvale) — Dawson Chen, Harsh Deep and Arjun Dixit
Movely (San Francisco/New York/Los Angeles/Salt Lake City) — Sajag Agarwal, Jake Corkin, Michael Friedman and Rafael Petry
Nowadays (San Francisco/Seattle) — Anna Sun and Amy Yan
Obento Health (San Francisco) — Naxin Wang and Rodrigo Gutierrez
Pure (Berkeley) — Trey Benedict and David Gordillo
Roame (San Francisco) — Tim Qin and Zi Liu
Slingshot (San Francisco) — Flynn Traeger, Moe Khalil, Bryn Hughes and Porter Weisberg
Stellar Sleep (San Francisco) — George Wang and Edrei Chua
