Ayan Agarwal

Excited to lead Anthropic's Series H and to continue our partnership with them. We believe this team has built one of the most consequential companies of this era, and they're just beginning to show what this technology can do. Excited for what's ahead.

was back at @ycombinator for S26 alumni demo day last week! couple things stood out: 1. Bar for hiring becoming a lot higher. Most companies don't see growth as gated by headcount, so they're hiring less and paying each hire more (3-5% vs. ~1% equity a few years ago) 2. So many founders are building AI infra hardware that there's talk of YC negotiating bulk fab allocation on behalf of future batches. Could be a huge differentiator for founders. Definitely a sign of the times... 3. Most companies I met are building on OAI rails. Seemed mostly driven by OAI's generous startup deal: $500K of free credits, plus an offer to invest 7 figures, paid in credits rather than cash. Still TBD how sticky those workloads are. 4. Defense tech was the most apparent theme. I think more founders were selling to the Ukrainian ministry of defense than to consumers (cc @lacker) 5. Founders with progress taking advantage of a hot market. First time I've seen tranched seed rounds coming out of YC! YC has done a great job reinventing itself for the biggest themes today arond hardware / AI / reindustrialization. Congrats to all the s26 founders on a killer batch.

Back at @ycombinator for alumni demo day yesterday - a couple things that stood out: 1. Talent shifting from software to hardware. Saw repeat / exited SaaS founders in the batch now building in atoms. Moving where the immediate opportunities & bottlenecks are. 2. “Build something agents want” - PLG has become agent-led growth. Teams building to get picked and consumed by agents, not humans 3. Computer-use agents are eroding moats. If agents operate software like humans, startups don't need to integrate with incumbents and can’t be “locked out” via API. e.g. healthcare startups grabbing data from hospital EHR 4. Schleps are back! so many founders opened conversations with "i know this is super unsexy, but...". I think many software founders have stopped trying to out-build the labs, and are instead going after the ugly, defensible segments instead. Focused on deep proprietary data, heavy workflows, etc. These companies had crazy revenue numbers so seems to be working! 5. Founders working with the government vs. around it. Old YC instinct (imo) was to route around the regulator and ask forgiveness vs. P26 teams in energy, airspace, defense partnering with agencies from day one. In general, heard govt is leaning in + moving faster than founders expected thanks @garrytan for the (last min) invite and congrats on a killer batch. Good luck to p26 tomorrow!

"there is reason for optimism: in our new world, the victors will be those who are best suited to deliver mass and apply advanced technologies to their future force." excited to continue supporting the optimists @anduriltech

Back at @ycombinator for alumni demo day and you could feel the difference. Observations as a founder-turned-investor: 1. W26 is shipping way faster than earlier batches. Floored by companies that pivoted in the last few weeks with real products and customers. I attempted a late pivot in the S21 batch and it was… not like that 2. Spending more on tokens than headcount. Many 2-person teams consuming over $75K of tokens / month with no signs of slowing down. 3. First hires are increasingly in sales / commercial engineer roles, not “pure” devs. Distribution > engineering. 4. Crazy traction, and it’s not just "YC ARR”. Founders running sales / success / support agents are showing up to enterprise conversations looking like mature orgs. Lots of healthcare, banking, govt logos across the batch. 5. Valuations reflect all of this. Most teams raising at $30-40M vs ~$20M just a year or two ago. Love seeing founders get rewarded for speed, progress, profitability. 6. And a fun surprise: tons of deeptech love! Robotics, energy, drug discovery - YC branching out in a positive way. Most importantly: founders still love YC. Reuniting with my batchmates (five years later!) and supporting W26 founders means more than I can put into a tweet.