What YC Wants Funded in 2026 (and Why Each Bet Just Became Possible)
YC Request for startups Fall 2026
💊 Before we start, today’s quick hits:
LEARNING OF THE DAY: RETARDMAXXING, if Marc Andreessen is doing it, why shouldn’t you? Learn what it means here!
YC just told founders in one line that the last three years of AI startups are already obsolete: “that’s what most startups from 2023 to 2025 built, tools that help people do their jobs.”
Their Summer 2026 Requests for Startups is a map of where the next wave of money goes instead, and the total addressable market they’re pointing at (services spend) is many times larger than all of software.
We read the full RFS and broke down all six bets into what to build, why the timing just flipped, and which incumbents are exposed, so you can act before the batch does.
In this issue you’ll find:
The 2023-2025 playbook is dead: why YC is done funding copilots and wants companies that sell the service
The 4 outsourced services YC will fund you to replace (and why outsourced means easiest to kill)
Company Brain: the missing infrastructure layer every AI startup is quietly blocked on
Why the science bets (agriculture, discovery engines, personalized medicine) all became fundable in the same 12 months
The stealable timing signal: how to read an RFS for when a market just opened
If you are serious about building or investing in AI, you can subscribe here:
Here’s a good place to start:
↳Alex Karp’s Playbook for Which AI Companies Survive
↳19 great new details about Cursor’s rise
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