Elevator Pitch
YC expects a wave of vertical AI agents, LLM software tuned to fully automate specific jobs, to rival the B2B SaaS wave of 2005 to 2020.
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Full Description
From 2005 to 2020, YC says, interactive web apps fueled a wave of B2B SaaS: more than 100 unicorns, and nearly half of all venture funding. YC expects a parallel wave of vertical AI agents over the next decade.
A vertical AI agent is software built on LLMs and tuned to automate real, important work. Recent YC companies built an AI tax accountant, medical biller, phone support agent, compliance agent and quality assurance tester. YC rejects the "ChatGPT wrapper" label: making these work in production takes real agentic architectures, integration with legacy systems and deep domain knowledge.
SaaS made workers somewhat more efficient; vertical agents aim to automate the work entirely, and YC says those that reach human-level performance grow very fast.
The ask: vertical AI agents, including in the many large categories YC sees as still untouched. YC thinks this could produce another 100 unicorns.
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