10 startups to watch from Y Combinator’s W25 Demo Day

One of Silicon Valley’s most storied startup accelerators, Y Combinator, held its Winter 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, showcasing what its latest batch of 160 startups are cooking up. Some of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups – including Stripe, AirBnB, and Reddit – started out in a YC batch. Today, YC’s newer startups are focused on building the next big thing in AI. In this batch, we noticed a surprising number of startups creating tools to enhance other companies’ AI agents. Rather than building their own AI agents, these startups are building support tools. There’s no shortage of companies building AI agent tools today, but these managed to stick out from the crowd. There are some honorable mentions that didn’t quite make this list, but still managed to catch our attention. There’s Optifye, a startup that’s building software to manage factory workers, which was embroiled in a social controversy a few weeks ago. There’s also Artificial Societies, which runs AI simulations to ... Read full article.