What YC Is Accepting Now: 1,025 Companies, One Clear Pattern
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The short answer
Y Combinator is accepting smaller teams than it was a year ago — the median accepted company in the Summer 2026 batch has two people, down from four in Summer 2025 — and it is accepting them almost exclusively in San Francisco. Around 91% of Summer 2026 companies are US-based and 72% list San Francisco as their city. The sector mix is still AI-heavy, but the fastest-growing category is hardware: robotics, manufacturing and hard tech. If you want a one-line read: two technical founders, in San Francisco, building something specific and difficult.
- Every figure below comes from Y Combinator's own public company directory, mirrored as structured data by the open-source YC API.
- This is the clearest change in the data and the least discussed.
- The geographic concentration is stronger than the remote-work era conversation suggests, and it tightened over the same twelve months.
- Roughly two thirds of companies across the last six batches describe themselves in AI terms, and about two thirds sell to businesses.
How we counted
Every figure below comes from Y Combinator's own public company directory, mirrored as structured data by the open-source YC API. We pulled the full list of companies in the six most recent batches — Spring 2025 through Summer 2026, 1,025 companies — on August 4, 2026, and grouped them by team size, headquarters city, region, industry and tags. These are accepted companies, not applications: YC does not publish application volume or acceptance rates, so nothing here should be read as an acceptance percentage. It is a description of who made it through. YC company directory · YC open-source API
YC is accepting smaller teams
This is the clearest change in the data and the least discussed. The median accepted company has shrunk by half in twelve months.
| Batch | Companies | Median team size | Two-person teams | Teams of 3 or fewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2025 | 143 | 3 | 31% | 57% |
| Summer 2025 | 166 | 4 | 27% | 48% |
| Fall 2025 | 148 | 3 | 36% | 58% |
| Winter 2026 | 198 | 2 | 45% | 73% |
| Spring 2026 | 196 | 3 | 39% | 69% |
| Summer 2026 | 174 | 2 | 53% | 76% |
In Summer 2026, more than half the batch is exactly two people, and three quarters are three or fewer. A year earlier, over half the batch had four or more. Nothing about YC's stated criteria changed. What changed is what two people can now ship: the tooling collapsed the headcount required to have a working product on demo day, and the batch reflects that.
The practical implication for applicants is uncomfortable but useful. A five-person team applying today is not read as more serious than a two-person team — it is read as a question about why five people were needed to get this far.
YC is accepting companies in San Francisco
The geographic concentration is stronger than the remote-work era conversation suggests, and it tightened over the same twelve months.
| Batch | US-based | San Francisco | Next largest city |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2025 | 78% | 56% | New York City (21) |
| Summer 2025 | 91% | 69% | New York City (25) |
| Fall 2025 | 79% | 62% | New York City (14) |
| Winter 2026 | 82% | 68% | New York City (20) |
| Spring 2026 | 95% | 86% | New York City (9) |
| Summer 2026 | 91% | 72% | New York City (10) |
London, Paris, Stockholm and Bangalore all appear, but in single digits. New York, the obvious second city, is in the low tens and falling. If you are applying from outside the Bay Area, the honest read is that you are not disqualified — but the batch you would join relocates, and the companies that stay listed elsewhere are the exception rather than the trend.
YC is accepting AI companies, but that has stopped being a differentiator
Roughly two thirds of companies across the last six batches describe themselves in AI terms, and about two thirds sell to businesses. That has been broadly stable. When almost everyone accepted is an AI company, saying you are an AI company carries no information in an application — it is table stakes, not a thesis.
The differentiating signal in the recent tag data is specificity of domain. The tags growing fastest in Summer 2026 are Robotics (17 companies), Infrastructure (17), Hard Tech (13), Manufacturing (13) and Hardware (12). Those sit alongside the software batch rather than replacing it, and they suggest YC is funding teams whose advantage is a hard problem, not a model. our full breakdown of what YC startups are building
What the profile adds up to
- Two founders, usually both technical, with a working product rather than a deck.
- Based in San Francisco, or willing to be for the batch and after it.
- Pointed at a narrow, nameable job — a role, a workflow, a physical process — not a platform.
- Increasingly, working on something with a hardware, infrastructure or regulatory obstacle in front of it, because pure software is no longer scarce.
None of this is a rule YC published. It is what the accepted set looks like, which in practice is the more reliable document.
Frequently asked questions
What is YC's acceptance rate?
Y Combinator does not publish current application volume or acceptance rates, and figures circulating online are estimates. What is verifiable is batch size: the last six batches ranged from 143 to 198 companies, with YC now running four batches a year instead of two.
How many founders should a YC application have?
Two is now the most common accepted configuration — 53% of the Summer 2026 batch. Solo founders are accepted (12 companies listed a team size of one in Summer 2026), but they are a minority, and very large founding teams are rare.
Do you have to move to San Francisco for YC?
YC requires participation in the batch in person in the Bay Area. Beyond the batch, 72% of Summer 2026 companies still list San Francisco as their headquarters afterwards, so relocation is the default path rather than a temporary one.
Does YC only accept AI startups?
No, but roughly two thirds of recent companies describe themselves using AI terms. Industrials, healthcare, fintech and consumer companies are all still funded — industrials in particular grew from 15 companies in Spring 2025 to 37 in Summer 2026.
Does YC accept companies from outside the US?
Yes. In the last six batches, non-US companies ranged from 5% to 22% of each batch, most commonly from the UK, France, Sweden, Canada and India. The share has trended down as the batch has concentrated in San Francisco.
References and sources
Company-level data: Y Combinator's public company directory, accessed via the open-source YC API mirror on August 4, 2026. Batch structure and program requirements: Y Combinator's official program pages. YC companies · YC open-source API · YC program details