Y Combinator built its empire on software. Its latest investment thesis says the garage is no longer enough.

Posted by TechDigest

Y Combinator published its Summer 2026 Request for Startups in late April, just days before the application deadline. The document lists 15 categories of companies that YC’s partners want to fund. Eight of them require capital, hardware, or both. The list includes AI for low-pesticide agriculture, c

1 replies

tomspark wrote:

Yeah, this actually makes sense. Software scaling got saturated years ago — everyone and their cousin is building the next SaaS thing. Hard tech, biotech, and hardware are where real defensibility and moats exist now. YC pivoting toward that is just following the money and the actual problem space.