11 purpose-built AI specialists that work around the clock to do your deepest, strategic work for you at warp speed – enabling enterprises to compete effectively:
Acquisition Hunter → Identifies strategic targets before competitors notice them
Business Relationship Analyst → Maps customer, vendor, and partner relationships
ChatCBI → AI-to-AI interface for integrating CB Insights intelligence into your workflows
Commercial Due Diligence Accelerator → Reduces diligence timelines from weeks to hours
Competitive Sentinel → Monitors what rivals are buying, building, and investing in
Deep Analyst → Generates comprehensive research reports in hours instead of weeks
Earnings Analyst → Delivers CEO-ready competitive intelligence within hours of earnings calls
Partner and New Business Finder → Detects high-value partnership opportunities using funding signals
Personal Briefing → Scours global news to surface personalized growth opportunities
Sales Account Planner → Accelerates rep ramp-up with deep account understanding
Scouting Report → Generates analyst-grade SWOT analyses on any private company on command
Over half of Y Combinator's latest cohort are building agentic AI solutions. What does this signal about the next wave of AI?
De-risking AI development is the top priority
11 companies are focused on making AI-generated code safer through testing, QA, and guardrails. These new tools will accelerate the growth of more reliable AI software development. Translation: "vibe coding" is getting enterprise-ready.
Web agents are getting specialized
Moving beyond general-purpose browsing to high-value applications; from legacy system integration to automated testing. Agents capable of accessing and browsing the web can access more data and information than what is typically available in a company’s systems. This helps provide more context to agentic systems, improving decision-making, and ultimately autonomy.
Backend automation is the new frontier
While most of the first generation of AI agents have focused on customer-facing tasks, this cohort is targeting back-office operations; accounting, CRM, system implementations. Currently, these companies focus on narrowly defined, specialized backend workflows. Expanding into more end-to-end workflows will require greater trust in agentic AI applications.
Regulated industries are no longer off-limits
19% of the agentic AI companies in YC's spring cohort are targeting healthcare and financial services. With 32% of vertical AI companies already actively deploying solutions, compliance barriers are falling faster than expected.
YC's bets on agentic AI are a leading indicator of where the sector is heading. For investors, acquirers, and operators this is a direct lens into the hottest opportunities and the competitive landscape.
Key takeaways from the data on the companies already operating across the categories outlined in YC's Summer 2025 Request for Startups:
1) "The next OpenAI" – AI Research Labs are hot but... only if you can hire the required specialized expertise that most founding teams lack. The technical barrier creates natural defensibility for those who can attract the right talent.
2) The Internal Agent Builders sector has the second highest average company health (Mosaic 496) but one of the lowest average commercial maturity scores (2.2). The infrastructure layer remains underbuilt relative to the attention that agents as a whole are receiving.
3) Everyone is building in and investing in Healthcare AI. Healthcare AI has seen the most early-stage investments this year (75 companies) and has the highest average commercial maturity (3.2). All this activity suggests oversaturation. Yes, healthcare remains an unsolved trillion-dollar problem, but there can only be so many companies that succeed... expect competition and consolidation ahead.
4) There is opportunity in the middle. Voice AI, AI Personal Assistants, and Software for Robots have seen balanced attention and new market entrants this year. Advancements and mega rounds at the foundational levels for these sectors (ex: ElevenLabs and Cartesia in voice, foundational model advancements for Personal Assistants, and projected $2.3B funding for humanoid robots in 2025) are laying a strong foundation for a wave of new companies.
5) Found/fund where the competition is least and the demand is clear. The bottom three sectors across education, tutoring, and residential security are also the most ripe for disruption. I still see yard signs for security systems. I still see kids doing times-tables on binder paper. I just overheard a wine-drunk group of parents complaining about how much they spent on SAT prep. The pain points are there and the competition isn't.
YC's Summer 2025 RFS isn't just about following the money or chasing the least crowded spaces – it highlights where technological readiness, market demand, and structural opportunity overlap. Many of these sectors are where the next wave of transformative AI companies will emerge.
Which sectors and companies are you watching most closely?
I’m hiring my replacement… in public. (More on what’s next for me later!)
When I started at Live Data Technologies, my directive was simple:
Put content and context around our real-time job change data.
Two years later, that directive has evolved into an ecosystem-driven Marketing & Insights function that turns job change and employment data into compelling narratives, facilitates incredible partnerships, and generates demand, making Live Data seem larger than life.
As I look to hire my replacement, I thought there would be no better way to find and assess candidates than to let anyone interested in the role show their skills in public. After all, the whole point of the role is to turn job change data into insights that get shared with the world.
How will this work?
1) Get the data*
We’re giving open access to a dataset of 100K+ job changes we’ve detected in 2025, the Moneyball and Moneyball Battle platforms, and the Live Data logo.
2) Find the story and visual
Use the data, the platform, and your data viz and copywriting skills to surface compelling insights. Use my previous posts or news stories as inspiration or come up with a wild hypothesis about what job change data can uncover. Just make sure you’re confident in your analysis before you post and can field any follow-up questions about your process. One of the most important skills for this job is having a good bullsht meter.
3) Post it on LinkedIn
A huge part of this role is sharing these insights with the world. Share your take and make it interesting (bonus points if you go viral or spark a cool influencer partnership).
4) Tag me + Live Data Technologies
We’ll see it, the world will see it, and if it’s good, we’ll reach out to talk.
Other “rules”
Post as many insights as you’d like but… make sure to maximize each one. We’re all subject to the LinkedIn algo gods and the role requires understanding how to get the most out of a post.
Adhere to the unwritten Live Data brand guidelines… aka make sure your viz looks cool (hint: we like dark mode).
The best viz isn’t always the one with the most likes. Vanity metrics are cool. Targeted insights that engage Live Data’s ICP are what pay the bills. Keep both in mind.
That’s it… it’s that simple. We’ll be watching.
Data file, Moneyball access, and Live Data logo for viz purposes in the folder linked in URL
How does a 7-year-old startup beat out the legacy defense contractors for a potentially $8.9B contract?
Start with "outsiders" to disrupt. Bring in "insiders" to scale.
For the first few years, hashtag#Anduril built a team of top tech startup alumni to achieve the pace and culture of innovation required to disrupt a decades-old industry notorious for bureaucracy-stalled rates of progress.
In the last 18 months, Anduril's hiring patterns have changed. As Anduril matures, they're now hiring more talent from the legacy contractors – people with the experience to help reach scale and navigate government contracts.
"Anduril is proving that with the right team and business model, a seven-year-old company can go toe-to-toe with players that have been around for 70+. The real winner? The United States of America." – Palmer Luckey
In the last couple of years, Anduril has beat out the legacy defense contractors for $Billions worth of contracts. As the US military looks to private defense tech start-ups and VCs pour even more capital into private defense tech companies, which other defense startups will adopt Anduril's hiring playbook?
What other insights can you discover with the fastest job change data?
NYC has been hot on the heels of the Bay Area for years. In H1 2023, the Bay Area beat out NYC by a mere 26 founders. Early data from January 2024 showed that the Bay was still on top by a margin of 18 new founders.
The NYC entrepreneurial scene went on a tear in February and March to top the Q1 2024 count by 54 more new founders versus the Bay Area.
NYC's takedown of the Bay Area is the top story from Q1 but, there's another big story from Q1's new founder data...
Founders are back baby!
The data from Q1 2024 shows a ~15% increase in new founders versus Q1 2023. This is a great early sign for a rebounding startup scene that nearly ground to a halt in 2023.
Interesting data on the growth of angel investing during ZIRP and the 2020-2022 IPO window. If we see a bunch of IPOs in 2024, will we see a lot of new angels?
Apple hired hundreds of key employees from top health and biotech companies. What can hiring patterns tell us about the future of Apple Health?
CGM on your wrist?
One of the worst-kept "secrets", Apple has been working on non-invasive CGM since the "Jobs days". Pouring fuel on the fire in hopes of a world-changing innovation, Apple continues to hire top research and engineering talent from Dexcom, Abbott, Novartis, and other leading CGM and diabetes companies.
Is Apple taking on Amazon Pharmacy?
Apple has been increasing its recruiting from top biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Is this a signal that they are preparing to take on Amazon's pharmacy offering? Or, is the company simply building out a roster of top talent that knows its way around the highly regulated health and medical industries?
Mental health iOS?
Your Apple Watch measures your health and well-being. Can it help you improve it? Earlier this year, Apple launched new mental health features including mood, emotion, and mental health tracking and assessments. What features are the company's most recent hires from Headspace, Cerebral, and Modern Health working on?
The health hires that Apple has made recently highlight some of the product areas that the company is actively working on. Who else have they hired and what are they building?
Which company's product roadmap should I dig into next?
