Y Combinator Demo Day 2024: AI agents for the enterprise

243 new startups pitched their companies to an invitation-only group of venture capitalists last week at the 39th Y Combinator Demo Day. As with previous batches, we are excited to highlight our takeaways as to what the YC batch means for the future of enterprise technology.

Core themes for YC S24 included AI agents, voice AI agents, AI copoilots, and AI devtools. Numerous companies were the “Perplexity for”, “DataDog for”, and “Vanta for” various spaces. Several companies built new foundation models for specific domains, and AI coding remained a core theme. Robotics increased significantly–with more robotics-tagged companies in YC S24 than any prior batch. Companies also focused on healthtech, proptech, fintech, and govtech.

In this post, we summarize both selected founder quotes which we found memorable or remarkable and selected companies in enterprise technology, organized by 17 themes. Of note, many companies span multiple themes but are listed once under a primary theme.

1) AI Agents

2) AI Copilots

3) Voice AI Agents

4) Foundation Models

5) AI Search

6) AI Coding

7) AI Chips

8) AI Devtools

9) Devtools

10) Data

11) Robotics

12) Healthtech

13) Proptech

14) Fintech

15) Govtech

16) Compliance

17) Verticals and Other

I. Founder Quotes

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Over the two days, we took notes on memorable or remarkable YC founder quotes. Some of the quotes are unsolved problems in the world; some are non-obvious trends; some are provocative perspectives on outstanding debates. Below are 25 founder quotes that we took away from YC S24.

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“Copilot and Cursor are missing the point. They just make writing code faster. Very soon, AI will act more like senior architects rather than junior developers.” CodeViz

“LLMs alone are pattern recognizers that guess at code. They are ill-suited to test software.” Benchify

“Running AI models on GPUs is even more expensive than buying them. AI models have gotten so large that it can take 40 seconds just to load one.” Outerport

“Today, 90% of AI workflows run on Nvidia. The main barrier for using alternative GPUs is the lack of developer tools.” Felafax

“The best sales reps aren't just great at selling, they are also elite content creators.” Mica AI

“While there's been a ton of hype surrounding Sora-like video, we're focused on where the majority of enterprise value lies: vector graphics.” Cracked

“Current methods for controlling models such as fine tuning and prompt engineering are falling short. Instead, we steer models by interpreting the insides.” dmodel

“We have the #1, #2, #4, #5, and #6 most downloaded Llama-3 models after Meta.” Unsloth AI

“DSPy has 17K GitHub stars, and Zenbase is building the production version.” Zenbase AI

“All media companies need to offer their own Perplexity-like experiences. Gemini and Perplexity are the imperial forces. We are arming the rebels.” Capitol AI

“Our weather foundation model predicted the path of Hurricane Beryl three days before the U.S. weather agencies.” Silurian

“The typical HOA manager is unresponsive, disorganized, and hard to reach. We replace these managers with AI.” Assembly HOA

“Nearly every software company stores user session replays, but nobody watches them.” PathPilot

“The rapid rise of AI is driving demand for better chips, but traditional simulation tools based on 50-year old technology can't keep up.” DeepSim

“Now, it is easy to get an LLM to generate code. The real pain comes afterwards in debugging.” MagiCode

“The most popular AI code editor in the world will be open source.” Void

“While software teams have really good tools, hardware teams don't have such tools because so much of the work is with external vendors and suppliers.” Vendra

“The next 500 million people working with AI will be analytical domain experts who need the right toolkit for AI.” Wordware

“The future of AI is deeply personalized to the individual.” Mem0

“In a few years, every device will have powerful AI chips, and every app will offload some inference to them.” Neuralize

“CIOs' biggest nightmare is that sensitive company information gets copy/pasted into models' training data.” Unbound Security

“80% of medical malpractice victims never seek a remedy. Our mission is to scale justice.” Olive Legal

“Our secret is that we don't change how anyone works. Trucking runs on emails and phone calls. That's not going to change.” Cartage

“The biggest problem in robotics is data scarcity.” Sensei

“Breakthroughs in voice AI in the past four months finally make drive thru voice ordering possible.” Lilac Labs

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II. Themes and Companies

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1) AI Agents

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AI agents to act autonomously to solve business problems were a core theme in YC S24. The agents served as “AI employees” for end-to-end services such as HOA management, in business functions such as sales, finance, engineering, and customer support, and in industry verticals such as property management and distribution.

• Customer experience: PathPilot provides an AI customer experience agent to observe user session replays, identify funnel leaks, triage bugs, and follow up with customers. Helium continuously experiments on consumer app experiences to increase revenues, starting with subscription paywalls for mobile apps.
• Customer support: Parahelp provides an AI support agent for customer tickets at software companies. RowBoat Labs provides LLM agents for customer support in fintech.
• Finance: Dimely provides AI agents for B2B SaaS finance teams. Fazeshift provides an AI agent for accounts receivables. FurtherAI automates back office operations at insurance brokerages, including policy checking and proposal generation. Arva AI builds AI agents for instant business verifications at banks and fintechs.
• Engineering: camfer provides an AI mechanical engineer to autonomously design systems, source off-the-shelf parts, and create manufacturing drawings. Spur provides an AI QA engineer to test websites with natural language. Opslane provides AI SRE for incident response and resolution. Parity provides an AI SRE to autonomously triage root causes and fix issues in cloud infrastructure.
• Procurement: Pulse AI provides AI agents for supply chain management at large enterprises.
• Product design: Polymet helps non-designers create production-ready designs with front-end code.
• Property management: Assembly HOA provides AI-based HOA management services. ProhostAI provides an AI property manager for rental hosts.
• Sales: AI Sell provides AI sales associates for eCommerce sites. Mica AI builds AI B2B sales agents to analyze sales calls, generate collateral, and follow up on deals.
• Wholesalers: Seals AI provides AI employees for wholesalers and distributors to quote and take orders and collect payments.

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2) AI Copilots

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Similarly, AI copilots to assist workers were a core theme at YC S24. AI copilots helped employees in industry verticals such as accounting, hardware, and real estate and in business functions such as graphics design and procurement.

• Accounting: TaxGPT builds AI copilots for accounts to automate tax research, email replies, IRS tax notice replies, and document collection. Tabular provides AI accounting firm copilot, starting initially in Europe. LedgerUp provides an AI bookkeeper for startups and SMBs.
• Graphics: ideate.xyz provides AI graphics design copilot for content marketers. Cracked provides a copilot for motion graphics.
• Hardware: Vendra provides an AI copilot for hardware teams working with vendors, suppliers, and manufacturers.
• Procurement: Lighthouz AI building AI procurement specialists for manufacturing industry.
• Real estate: Plume helps real estate professionals with home energy audits and renovation planning
• Wholesalers: Distro helps distributor sales reps quote complex systems.

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3) Voice AI Agents

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Voice technology has seen significant recent improvements, and voice AI agents emerged as a core theme at YC S24. Voice agents worked in industry verticals such as restaurants and healthcare providers and in business functions such as customer support and human resources. In addition, one YC S24 company provided a testing automation platform for voice AI agents. 

• Customer support: Phonely provides AI call center agents.
• Healthcare: Hey Revia provides voice AI agents to automate complex phone calls for healthcare providers.
• HRtech: Mindely provides voice AI interviewer for complex skills assessment.
• Mortgages: Kastle provides AI voice agents for mortgage servicing over the phone.
• Restaurants: Lilac Labs provides voice AI to automate drive thru order taking.
• Testing: Hamming AI provides automated testing for AI voice agents.

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4) Foundation Models

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A major debate in AI is whether a few large models will dominate or many small models will proliferate in the future. At YC S24, several companies focused on building new, narrow, domain-specific foundation models. Areas included bio drug discovery and chemical process optimization, weather simulation and forecasting, and multi-modal time series data.

• Bio: Evolvere BioSciences builds foundation models to engineer next generation antibiotics that outpace bacterial evolution. ReactWise provides an AI copilot for chemical process optimization after drug discovery.
• Time series: The Forecasting Company builds foundation models for multi-modal time series data
• Weather: Silurian build foundation models to simulate the Earth, starting with weather.

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5) AI Search

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The “Perplexity” for various spaces was a theme at YC S24. Companies provided search agents for industry consultants, research experts, and spreadsheet business users. In addition, one YC company provided search for media companies to offset the rise of Perplexity-like sites.

• Consultants: Dataleap, the Perplexity for consultants, searches through a curated database of market data rather than the general web.
• Experts: Undermind provides an AI agent for complex search for experts such as research scientists and doctors.
• Media: Capitol AI enables publishers to provide Perplexity-like search experiences.
• Spreadsheets: Zeit AI enables enterprise users to derive insights from spreadsheet data in natural language.

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6) AI Coding

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AI code review, editing, and security remained a core theme at YC. Company approaches included: a) use of formal methods in combination with LLMs, b) access to and use of companies’ codebases, c) capabilities independent of LLMs and APIs, d) visualization and navigation of codebase maps, and e) focus on software migration and modernization.

• Code review: MagiCode reviews AI generated code to find and fix errors. Benchify combines LLMs and formal methods used in mission critical industries to provide rigorous code review. Patched enables enterprise developer teams to automate workflows such as code review and documentation.
• Editor: Storia AI provides open source AI copilot that has access to companies' codebases, interprets companies' coding design patterns, and learns from project management software and technical design documents. Random Labs builds an open source pair programmer. Void, the open source Cursor alternative, provides a code editor that lets developers use any LLM and not send their code to APIs. Melty provides a chat-based code editor.
• Maps: CodeViz helps developers understand and navigate their codebases through codebase visual maps.
• Migration: Emergent provides autonomous agents for software migration and modernization.
• Security: Asterisk, an AI hacker for codebases, builds agents to secure code bases. ZeroPath provides a developer tool to autonomously find and fix software vulnerabilities.

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7) AI Chips

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Several YC S24 companies worked in the area of AI silicon and software, especially as GPU shortages continue to challenge the AI ecosystem. YC S24 companies included the “VMware for GPUs” and software to run AI models on non-Nvidia GPUs.

• GPU software: Felafax builds software infrastructure to run AI models on non-Nvidia GPUs.
• Virtualization: Outerport, the VMware for GPUs, helps companies swap multiple AI models even on a single GPU. Thunder Compute offers software to virtualize GPUs over networks.
• Inference: deepsilicon provides custom silicon to run neural networks.
• Design: DeepSim offers an AI physics simulator for AI chip design.

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8) AI Devtools

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Developer tools for LLMs and LLM applications were a core theme at YC S24. Companies included the “DataDog for LLMs,” the “DataDog for agents”, and the “Vercel for AI applications.” Numerous companies had impressive metrics on Github stars and downloads. AI devtool areas included data connections, deployment, distillation, evaluation, fine tuning, memory, on-device, prompt engineering, security, simulation, and steering.

• Data connections: Panora provides data connectors and data transformers for AI products through a well-documented API.
• Deployment: Comfy Deploy, the Vercel for Gen AI applications, enables developers to build and deploy applications that use image and video models.
• Distillation: Proxis provides a platform for developers to distill and serve LLMs.
• Evaluation: Lytix, the DataDog for LLMs, provides evaluations customized to each LLM’s use case, tech stack, and domain knowledge. Laminar AI, the open source DataDog and PostHog for AI agents, provides an observability and analytics platform for LLM applications.
• Fine tuning: Pipeshift provides a fine tuning and inference platform for open source LLMs. Unsloth AI provides an open source platform for fine tuning and training of LLMs.
• IDE: Wordware provides IDE to develop, iterate, and deploy AI experiences.
• Memory: Mem0 provides an open source memory platform for LLM applications.
• On-device: Neuralize provides a deployment platform for on-device AI inference.
• Prompts: Zenbase AI automates prompt engineering and model selection for developers. Weavel optimizes prompt and LLM engineering.
• Security: Unbound Security helps enterprises roll out AI tools to employees without fear of data loss.
• Simulation: Coval provides a simulation and evaluation tool platform for AI agents.
• Steering: dmodel interprets insides and enables steering of LLMs.
• Web scraping: Saldor provides web scraper AI agent.

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9) Devtools

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In addition, several YC S24 companies focused on devtools for authentication, Kubernetes, logging and observability, and product and user flow visibility.

• Authentication: Stack Auth provides an open source, developer friendly Auth0 alternative.
• Kubernetes: Glasskube provides open source Kubernetes package manager.
• Logging: Patchwork Technologies provides a next generation logging and observability platform.
• Microservices: Gauge provides a platform to break large codebases into smaller parts.
• Product: Ficra gives companies real-time visibility into product screen and user flows.
  
  

10) Data

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Although smaller than in previous years’ batches, several YC S24 companies worked on data. Two companies built data centers based in space and underwater. Two other companies focused on data annotations and synthetic data creation.

• Data center: Lumen Orbit builds data centers in space to take advantage of energy, cooling, and scaling in space. NetworkOcean builds underwater data center to reduce power usage through underwater cooling.
• Data warehouse: Snowpilot provides data warehouses that are as simple to use as spreadsheets.
• Labeling: Aviary, the Scale AI for video, generates annotated data for companies' videos.
• Vision: Simplex creates synthetic datasets for vision models by generating 3D scenes from prompts.

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11) Robotics

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2024 has been a significant year for robotics. Prominent $100M+ venture financings include Agility, Figure, and Skild. The Information posted earlier this year, “AI Investors Turn Their Attention–and Deep Pockets–to Robotics” and “Venture FOMO Hits Robotics.” 

Similarly, robotics grew as a significant theme at YC S24. 13 companies in YC S24 were tagged as robotics, the largest number for a YC batch to date. Robotic technologies included data collection, defect detection, software deployment, and remote monitoring. Robotic verticals included airports and warehouses.

• Airport baggage: Azalea Robotics provides robots to automate airport baggage handling.
• Camera detection: Ember Robotics, the Datadog for robots, automatically detects camera vision failures. 
• Data: Sensei, the Scale AI for Robotics, builds a low cost data collection tool for robotic training data.
• Defects: Bucket Robotics detects manufacturing defects with CAD and synthetic data trained vision models.
• Deployment: Miru enables developers to update software over the air for robots and IoT devices through Github changes.
• Monitoring: Autumn Labs, the Datadog for industrial robots, provides a remote monitoring and control platform.
• Operating system: Cerulion provides open source OS for robots.
• Warehouses: Ultra builds warehouse robotics to package e-commerce orders. AutoPallet Robotics provides a novel low-cost robot system for warehouses.

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12) Healthtech

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Healthtech remained a core theme at YC. Business functions included billing, contracts, denials, human resources, legal, and clinical trials. Clinical areas included emergency physicians, mental health providers, and private practice physicians. 

• Billing: Taxo automates medical billing and coding.
• Clinical: Vera Health provides AI clinical decision support for emergency physicians.
• Clinics: Dodo provides AI employees for veterinarians to handle front and back office tasks, such as answering calls, sending medical records, and refilling prescriptions.
• Contracts: Ply Health helps providers get in-network with health insurance companies. Fuse analyzes healthcare provider contracts to identify revenue leakage from underpayments and missed negotiation opportunities.
• Denials: Guardian AI helps providers with insurance claim denials.
• HR: Planbase provides a healthcare workforce management platform, including credentialing, scheduling, and payroll.
• Legal: Olive Legal generates AI medical summaries for injury lawyers. Brighterway helps physicians review medical legal cases by structuring patient medical records, arranging chronologically, and pulling out medically relevant information for the physicians' specialties.
• Mental health: mdhub provides AI assistants to help with mental health clinic operations.
• Private practice: Syntra provides back office software for private practice doctors, including scheduling, billing, and patient intake.
• Trials: Baseline AI automates document creation and data management for clinical trials.

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13) Proptech

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Numerous YC S24 companies focused on proptech. Companies addressed commercial and real estate verticals. In addition, technologies included 3D world creation and property management automation. 

• 3D: DigitalCarbon creates immersive 3D worlds from images and videos, focusing initially on real estate.
• Commercial: Henry builds deal decks for commercial real estate brokers to pitch and sell properties.
• Marketplace: Tandem offers an online office space marketplace.
• Property management: Propaya automates property management tasks such as rent collection, document filing, and servicing.
• Residential: Drillbit provides office work automation for residential contractors.

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14) Fintech

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Fintech was noticeably smaller in number at YC S24. 16 companies in YC S24 were tagged as fintech, as compared to a peak of 89 companies in YC W22. YC S24 had the lowest number of fintech-tagged companies since YC S18, which had 14 fintech companies. Two fintech companies in YC S24 focused on independent financial advisors. One company addressed operations for insurance brokers, and another company provided AI settlement for securities. 

• Financial advisors: FINNY AI helps independent financial advisors find and manage leads and maintain existing client relationships. Thyme helps financial advisors with core practice functions such as meetings, data, and workflows.
• Insurance: Praxos automates operations for insurance brokers.
• Settlement: TradeFlow provides AI settlement for financial securities, automating manual email and PDF workflows.

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15) Govtech

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Several YC S24 companies were in govtech in areas such as government approvals, government contracts, non-GPS drone navigation, and city traffic intelligence.

• Approvals: SchemeFlow automates government approvals for construction projects.
• Contracts: Odo helps companies find and win federal, state, and local government contracts.
• Navigation: Theseus building vision-based navigation replacement for GPS in drones.
• Traffic: XTraffic helps cities automate, manage, and control traffic lights with AI.

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16) Compliance

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The “Vanta” for various spaces was a theme at YC S24. Companies worked in compliance for industries such as financial services and hardware and for business functions such as carbon emissions and industry regulations. 

• Banks: Remo provides AI copilots for compliance teams at banks.
• Carbon: Offstream, the Vanta for carbon compliance, provides a carbon compliance platform to unlock revenues.
• Fintech: Saturn automates office workflows in compliance and back office functions for wealth managers. Focal provides AI compliance operations for banks and fintechs.
• Hardware: Saphira AI, the Vanta for hardware, automates hardware products' safety certification.
• Regulation: Rescript tracks and finds relevant legal and regulatory changes for business and compliance teams.

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17) Verticals and Other

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Several YC S24 companies focused on other industry verticals, including battery R&D, chemical manufacturing plants, and research.

• Battery: Ionworks provides simulation software for battery R&D teams, similar to Benchmark in biotech or Synopsis in electronics design.
• Manufacturing: Poka Labs builds scheduling software for chemical manufacturing plants.
• Research: Simplifine provides AI-enabled workspace for researchers that adapts to subject matters and delivers PhD-level analyses.

Other companies in YC S24 addressed HRtech, legaltech, logistics, and martech. 

• Hardware: Entangl automates end-to-end engineering design using AI.
• HRtech: OrgOrg provides an organizational productivity suite of apps for companies.
• Legaltech: Parley automates flat-fee legal work using LLMs, starting with visa applications for immigration attorneys. &AI provides patent due diligence and management platform for attorneys, inventors, and investors.
• Logistics: Passage helps companies clear goods through customs with AI. Cartage coordinates freight autonomously between shippers and truckers.
• Martech: Promi provides an AI personalized discount optimization tool to merchants. Conveo conducts and analyzes qualitative customer interviews using AI.
• Mining: Mineflow helps mining companies predict mineral deposits shape and location. 1849 bio makes microbes for mining companies to unlock metal trapped in untouchable ore.
• Workflow: Manaflow provides an orchestration layer for businesses to use AI to automate repetitive internal tasks.

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Conclusion

Congratulations to all YC S24 founders! The S24 batch had remarkable trends in the rise of AI agents, AI copilots, and voice AI agents. In addition, S24 companies are building new domain-specific foundation models and new AI chip hardware/software solutions. Further, AI devtools and robotics emerged as core themes in the S24 batch. 

We’re excited to see how you shape the future of technology, and we’re excited to continue to work with you. Reach out to @wing_vc with your thoughts and questions. 

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Acknowledgements: thank you to Wing partners Chris Zeoli and Tanay Jaipuria and to Wing consultant Clayton Ramsey for your contributions to this post!