SCOOP: Y Combinator Startups Land Checks, Gather Hype as Neo & Others Vie for Talent

Think Y Combinator is overrated and overvalued? We’ve heard it all before. Investors still won’t stop writing checks. Last week’s YC demo day had VCs buzzing about several startups from the Winter 2026 batch. This time around, there were fewer companies that could be referred to (in derogatory terms) as “ChatGPT wrappers” — especially compared with a couple of years ago. AI infrastructure for enterprise was a big theme this batch, as was AI tooling for specific industries, like law and finance. Startups building the infrastructure for robotics also made a good showing.