AI was once again the buzzword for this latest batch of YC Demo Day companies. Nearly 190 companies participated in Y Combinator’s Winter ’26 cohort and presented their startups in a Demo Day on Tuesday.
These companies are working on products across industries such as law, transportation, and healthcare.
I did not, admittedly, listen to every single product pitch, given the sheer size of the cohort and this year’s Demo Day format available to media: YC posted the pitch videos, one by one, around 20 minutes after their presentations (rather than a livestream, or an in-person session invite).
Instead, I read about all 190 of the startups presenting and spent the day watching pitches from those I found intriguing, then narrowed it down to the 16 that stood out as the most interesting startups of this overflowing YC class.
ARC Prize Foundation What it does: Creates benchmarks to help measure progress toward AGI.
Why it’s interesting: A nonprofit in YC! But then again, when OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are already using some form of the organization’s benchmarks, it makes sense why it would be included. This foundation aims to inspire more open source AGI research by hosting competitions and awarding research grants. One reason for this AI revolution is to reach AGI (which Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says has already arrived), and it will be a matter of historical record for tracking how close we are from AI machines that have a general intelligence.
Asimov What it does: Collects human movement data to train humanoids
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Why it’s interesting: People from around the world submit videos of themselves performing movements and tasks to this company so it can then turn them into datasets that can help train robots. It’s part of the movement trying to make humanoids a thing, finding uses for them beyond the supply chain and entertainment. I’m bullish on humanoid technology, even though our “Rosey the Robot” era still might be eons away. Using data to teach humanoids the flow and — dare I say, elegance — of human movement could help them be less, well, robotic as …