YC Request for Startups: Fall 2026
YC RFSThe Y Combinator Request for Startups, from Fall 2026: 13 ideas YC’s partners want founders to build. Each links to a problem page with more detail, related problems and people working on it.
The Best Time to Build in Crypto
Crypto prices are down and builders are leaving, but YC says it is more optimistic than ever, citing regulatory clarity, stablecoin adoption, tokenized stocks and agents using crypto rails.
Self-Maintaining APIs
Breaking API changes ship unnoticed and new features go unused. API providers shouldn't just announce changes, they should apply them: agents that open PRs in customers' codebases when an API changes.
Data for the Real World
AI is superhuman on code, language and images, but the physical world is still measured by sparse sensors built for humans. Build new ways to collect dense physical-world data, then model and control real systems.
New Operating Systems for the Physical World
80% of workers don't sit at a desk, and field software hasn't changed in 20 years. Build the operating system that dispatches, manages and measures AI agents, robots and humans together.
AI for the Aging Population
By 2030 one in five Americans will be over 65, with millions of unfilled caregiving jobs. Build voice, monitoring, robotics and caregiver software designed for older adults and their families.
Proving You're Human
Deepfaked voices and video calls are making fraud explode, and every trust signal assumed faking a human was expensive. Rebuild the internet's trust layer: verify a real human is on the other end, ideally without giving up privacy.
AI-Powered Consumer Products for 1 Billion People
Every platform shift mints consumer giants, but AI's only new home-screen icon so far is ChatGPT. Agents are now good enough and soon cheap enough to rebuild everyday consumer categories.
AI-Native Compliance Infrastructure
Financial compliance is still spreadsheets, siloed tools and expensive headcount, and costs grow faster than revenue in new markets. Build AI-native compliance infrastructure with real-time visibility across regulatory regimes.
The Primer: An AI Tutor for Every Child
Build an AI tutor that adaptively teaches young children to read, write and do arithmetic at the quality of a devoted private tutor, at consumer scale, as the first step toward Neal Stephenson's "Primer".
Multiplayer AI
AI is still single-player: private chats and read-only transcripts. Build agents that whole teams share live, where anyone can watch, redirect and hand off long-running work together.
Compute at Sea
AI is running out of compute, power and land for data centers. Move compute offshore with fleets of standardized, modular vessels working together as one global cloud.
The Future of American Defense
The US Army is actively funding startups that build for ground combat, from low-cost interceptors to sensors, drones, resilient logistics and manufacturing that plug into its open system architecture.
A Cloud for Small Software
Agents make it easy to build "small software" for one person or a team, but it's still hard to deploy and share. Build the cloud that makes sharing a bespoke tool as easy as sharing a Google Doc.