YC Request for Startups: Summer 2025
YC RFSThe Y Combinator Request for Startups, from Summer 2025: 14 ideas YC’s partners want founders to build. Each links to a problem page with more detail, related problems and people working on it.
AI Research Labs
YC wants to back new independent AI research labs doing open-ended work that may take years to commercialize, the way OpenAI did.
More Design Founders
As AI coding tools make shipping software easier, YC argues design will matter more. It wants designers to use AI to start their own companies rather than fear it.
AI-Staffed Companies That Compete With Incumbents
Instead of selling AI agents to law firms, start a law firm staffed by AI agents and compete with them. YC wants full-stack AI companies in industries run by slow-moving incumbents.
Reinvent the Phone Call with Voice AI
Calling a business has barely changed in almost 100 years: long waits and phone trees. YC says new voice models now power AI agents that are indistinguishable from humans.
AI for Scientific Discovery
Software for chemistry, biology, materials science and operations research has barely changed in decades. YC wants startups that use AI, especially test-time compute, to change how physical things are made.
The AI Chief of Staff
Productivity apps help track what needs doing but don't do it. YC wants an LLM-powered personal assistant that knows your work and preferences and acts for you, turning to-do lists into done lists.
Automate Healthcare's $1 Trillion Administrative Burden
YC cites estimates that a third of US healthcare spending, over $1 trillion, goes to administration, much of it people moving data between systems by hand. LLM agents can now automate much of it.
The AI Tutor That Scales to Every Student
Personalized learning has been a dream of computer pioneers since the 1940s. YC thinks reasoning and multimodal AI models finally make a truly personal tutor for everyone possible.
The Developer Tools Stack for Robotics
Robots used to be expensive, brittle and limited to controlled settings. YC thinks foundation models are bringing robotics' ChatGPT moment and wants software tools that help others build robots.
Reinvent Education for 1.5 Billion Students
About 1.5 billion students are educated each year in ways that have barely changed for decades. YC thinks AI can reshape teaching, learning and assessment, if founders can crack the business model.
Commercial-Grade AI Security for Every Home
Consumers spend $20B a year on home security from legacy companies whose features haven't changed in decades. YC wants AI that brings commercial-grade security into the home.
Let Anyone Build AI Automation
YC expects every employee to build their own agents to automate the repetitive parts of their job. It wants the infrastructure they'll use to do that: internal agent builders.
Voice-First Email
Voice agents are now good enough to handle email out loud. YC wants teams building assistants that let people triage, reply and delegate scheduling by voice, starting with the inbox.
Democratize Financial Advice
Most people make big money decisions using friends, Google or an expensive advisor. YC wants LLM software that gives everyone personalized, unbiased finance, investment and tax advice at near-zero cost.