6,305 startups, one accelerator, 21 years
What Y Combinator's own public directory says about how YC changed: batches grew nearly a hundredfold, consumer apps gave way to AI for businesses, the program went global and then came home to San Francisco, and its oldest cohorts are now mostly acquired or gone.
YC funds about 95 times as many companies a year as it did in 2005
Companies per calendar year, all batches combined
The boom peaked in 2021 with 726 companies, shrank through 2023, and rebuilt on a new rhythm: YC added a Fall batch in 2024 and a Spring batch in 2025, so a year now holds four smaller batches instead of two big ones.
Every batch, side by side — the largest was W22, with 398 companies
Pick a column to open that batch in the explorer at the end of the page.
- 12005First batch, the Summer Founders Program
- 22014Sam Altman becomes president
- 32020Batches go remote
- 42022Standard deal rises to $500k
- 52023Garry Tan becomes CEO; batches back in San Francisco
- 62024–25Fall and Spring batches: four a year
Six eras of YC
Each row is a theme; a darker cell means a bigger share of that year's companies mention it, relative to the theme's own peak. The rows are sorted by when each theme peaked, so the waves run downhill.
Consumer web2005–2009 · 143 companies
Software moves into the browser; the first batches are a few dozen people making things for the web.
- 26% Web & social4.2× its all-time share
- 22% Mobile apps3.4× its all-time share
Mobile & marketplaces2010–2014 · 567 companies
The smartphone era: apps and on-demand marketplaces that connect buyers to couriers, drivers and hosts.
- 19% Mobile apps3.0× its all-time share
- 17% Marketplaces1.7× its all-time share
Hard tech & health2015–2018 · 956 companies
YC widens its bets to rockets, satellites, biotech and the first wave of machine learning.
- 20% Health & bio1.4× its all-time share
- 12% Robots & hard tech1.1× its all-time share
- 5% Climate1.5× its all-time share
Global fintech & SaaS2019–2022 · 2,163 companies
Remote batches open YC to the world; payments, banking and B2B software for every market.
- 26% Fintech1.4× its all-time share
- 31% SaaS1.4× its all-time share
- 16% Emerging markets2.1× its all-time share
Generative AI2023–2024 · 1,084 companies
ChatGPT lands; companies rebuild every workflow as “AI-native” and the tools to build on LLMs.
- 29% Generative AI2.1× its all-time share
- 29% APIs & dev tools1.3× its all-time share
Agents & robots2025–2026 · 1,386 companies
Software that acts on its own, and AI that leaves the screen: robots, drones and defense.
- 40% Agents2.4× its all-time share
- 21% Robots & hard tech1.8× its all-time share
Three in four new YC companies now pitch AI
Share of each batch whose description mentions AI, machine learning, LLMs, agents and the like (batches of 20+ companies)
For most of the 2010s AI was a fifth of YC, and still 25% in 2021. It doubled during 2022 and, after ChatGPT launched between the Summer 2022 and Winter 2023 batches, passed 60% and kept climbing. In 2026 it is 76% of all companies.
The newest word is “agent”. In 2021 hardly any one-liner said it; by 2026 one in five does.
Consumer fell from 51% of YC to 5%
Industry mix of each year's companies, as YC classifies them
The early YC made things for people: social apps, video, games, file sharing. Today most sell to businesses: B2B has been well over half of every year since 2023. Fintech had its moment — a fifth of 2022's companies — and shrank back once AI took over.
Industrials is the comeback: robotics, manufacturing, defense and aerospace went from 6% of 2022's companies to 18% of 2026's.
How YC companies describe themselves
Most common words in one-liners by era; the small number is the share of one-liners that use the word
2005–2012460 companies
2013–20181,206 companies
2019–20222,163 companies
2023–20262,470 companies
“Acquired” tops the early list because 25 of those companies' one-liners now say who bought them.
YC went global, then came home to San Francisco
Share of each year's companies, by where they are based today
Remote batches in 2020–22 opened YC to the world: 44% of 2021's companies were based outside the US, from Europe, Latin America, India, Africa and Southeast Asia. When batches moved back to San Francisco in 2023, the wave receded — 12% of 2026's companies are based abroad, and fully remote teams have almost vanished.
How each cohort turned out
Status of every company in YC's directory today, by the year it went through YC
Read it bottom to top as time passing. A young cohort is almost all active; the 2014 and 2015 cohorts are now roughly a third acquired, a third shut down and a third still going. Of everything that went through YC by 2012, 36% has been bought.
Consumer companies from the early years died most often; health and hardware are still standing
Status by industry, companies from 2005–2016 batches (count beside each)
From batch to bell: 24 YC companies went public
Every YC company that listed on a stock exchange, by IPO, direct listing, SPAC merger or reverse merger
Every listing, year by year
Dropbox
PagerDuty
Airbnb
DoorDash
Lucira Health
Coinbase
Matterport
Momentus
Amplitude
Ginkgo Bioworks
GitLab
Embark Trucks
Weave
Pardes Biosciences
Rigetti Computing
Presto
Instacart
Notable Labs
Reddit
Oklo
BillionToOne
Groww
Meesho
EquipmentShare2021 alone brought 10 listings, 5 of them through SPACs; 4 of those 10 are no longer independent public companies. Then a quieter run of classic IPOs: Instacart, Reddit, and in 2025–26 Groww, BillionToOne, Meesho and EquipmentShare.
How long it took: Pardes Biosciences listed 1 year after its batch (SPAC); Reddit took 19
Pardes BiosciencesS20 → 20211 yrMomentusS18 → 20213 yrsEmbark TrucksW16 → 20215 yrsGitLabW15 → 20216 yrsLucira HealthW15 → 20216 yrsDoorDashS13 → 20207 yrsGinkgo BioworksS14 → 20217 yrsGrowwW18 → 20257 yrsWeaveW14 → 20217 yrsBillionToOneS17 → 20258 yrsNotable LabsW15 → 20238 yrsRigetti ComputingS14 → 20228 yrsAmplitudeW12 → 20219 yrsCoinbaseS12 → 20219 yrsMatterportW12 → 20219 yrsMeeshoS16 → 20259 yrsPagerDutyS10 → 20199 yrsOkloS14 → 202410 yrsAirbnbW09 → 202011 yrsDropboxS07 → 201811 yrsEquipmentShareW15 → 202611 yrsInstacartS12 → 202311 yrsPrestoS10 → 202212 yrsRedditS05 → 202419 yrsThe companies
Reddit counts here: it listed in 2024, though YC's directory still marks it acquired, from its 2006 sale to Condé Nast. Listing routes, dates, tickers and today's status were checked against company releases, SEC filings and press reports in October 2026.
The acquisitions
The biggest reported prices
Announced price; a selection of deals with public prices, not a complete ranking
Brex → Capital One2026, agreed$5.15B
Segment → Twilio2020$3.2B
Truebill → Rocket2021$1.275B
Cruise → GM2016, “over $1B”$1B+
Twitch → Amazon2014$970M
PlanGrid → Autodesk2018$875M
The Athletic → NYT2022$550M
Bear Flag → Deere2021$250M
Heroku → Salesforce2010$212MThe biggest employers among YC companies
By team size listed in YC's directory
| Company | Batch | Status | People |
|---|---|---|---|
| BreadfastHousehold needs, from bread to everything. | S19 | Active | 10,000 |
| DoorDashRestaurant delivery. | S13 | Public | 8,600 |
| StripeEconomic infrastructure for the internet. | S09 | Active | 7,000 |
| AirbnbBook accommodations around the world. | W09 | Public | 6,132 |
| CoinbaseBuy, sell, and manage cryptocurrencies. | S12 | Public | 6,112 |
| EquipmentShareCloud solutions for the construction industry. | W15 | Public | 5,400 |
| DeelThe all-in-one HR and payroll platform for global teams | W19 | Active | 5,000 |
| 99minutosThe fastest shipping for online shopping | W20 | Active | 5,000 |
| RappiOn-demand delivery and financial services for Latin America. | W16 | Active | 4,800 |
| GrubMarketAI-powered technology enabler and digital transformer of American… | W15 | Active | 4,548 |
| DropboxBackup and share files in the cloud. | S07 | Public | 4,000 |
| Kapital BankEmpowering businesses to grow. | W22 | Active | 3,600 |
Explore a batch
Every batch from Summer 2005 to Fall 2026, with its mix and its largest companies today
Largest companies by team size
What YC gets: about 7% plus an uncapped SAFE
The directory's team sizes tell the life cycle: the typical company from 2013–2021 lists about a dozen people today, counting the ones that stopped growing; this year's batches are still two or three founders.
Method and sources
- Company data: Y Combinator's public company directory (ycombinator.com/companies), 6,305 companies, read through the open mirror at yc-oss.github.io/api on 2026-10-18. Batches: Summer 2005 to Fall 2026; a handful of Winter 2027 companies are left out of yearly charts.
- Status (Active, Inactive, Acquired, Public), industry, location and team size are YC's own labels. The directory lists companies YC keeps public, so older batches may undercount companies that shut down quietly.
- AI and theme shares are keyword matches on each company's one-liner and description (for AI: AI, machine learning, LLM, GPT, agents, generative, neural, computer vision, language/foundation models). They measure how companies describe themselves, not what they build.
- Location is the first location listed today, not where the company was at Demo Day.
- Combined valuation and deal terms: ycombinator.com and ycombinator.com/deal.
- Listings: company IPO and listing releases, SEC filings (e.g. Notable Labs Form 25), and reports from CNBC, Business Wire, Reuters via StreetInsider, Business Standard and IPOScoop; acquisitions of listed companies from the buyers' announcements (CoStar–Matterport, Applied Intuition–Embark, Pardes tender offer). Logos from YC's company directory.
- Acquisition prices as reported: Capital One–Brex $5.15B (agreed Jan 2026; Bloomberg Law, Simpson Thacher); Twilio–Segment $3.2B (TechCrunch, Oct 2020); Rocket–Truebill $1.275B (Dec 2021); GM–Cruise over $1B (Crunchbase News, 2016); Amazon–Twitch $970M (2014); Autodesk–PlanGrid $875M (2018); New York Times–The Athletic $550M (Jan 2022); Deere–Bear Flag Robotics $250M (Aug 2021); Salesforce–Heroku ~$212M (2010).