From Chat to Factory Floor: 18 New Bets on the Age of Vertical AI

How YC’s latest wave turned agents into coworkers, robots into welders, and our investment radar into a sci-fi screenplay, plus what’s next before Demo Day hits.

Jul 21, 2025

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Ever watched a Roomba zig-zag across the floor and thought, “Cool… but what if it filed my taxes while it cleaned?”

That’s roughly where early-stage tech is right now. The latest Y Combinator batches look less like a demo day and more like a sci-fi writers’ room: robots that weld sheet metal, legal AIs that out-brief associates, and vertical copilots for…

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