YC Demo Day Winter 2025: Robots, Weed Roombas, and my Top 10
Did someone say Maritime fusion science?
Yesterday in San Francisco, YC Demo Day for Winter 2025 was buzzing with top founders, startups, and investors.
It's no secret that AI is the common thread connecting most companies in this batch—and likely for the next few cycles. Notably, a quarter of startups in YC’s current cohort have codebases that are almost entirely AI-generated. But the key context missing from that headline is that these are technical founders leveraging AI to supercharge their abilities.
With only one minute to make an impact, the 160 demos today were impressive. While many of these companies are destined for big things, a few stood out to me—from robots weeding farmers' fields to AI transforming immigration law processes, and even high-thrust space vehicles. It was quite the day.
I’m investing in two of my favorites (announcements to come). While Vermilion focuses on dev, data, infrastructure, security, and technical products built by technical founders, there were plenty of standouts outside my usual scope. So, I’ve included a little something for everyone in my list.
Companies to watch (in alphabetical order)
A1Base: Twilio for AI agents
The only API to give AI Agents a phone number, an email, and a trusted identity. Give your AI agents real-world capabilities beyond just chat interfaces. More details.
Gale: AI Powered Immigration Law Firm
Coordinates tech with independent immigration lawyers to get businesses H-1Bs for their employees. Launch announcement.
Confident AI: The DeepEval LLM Evaluation Platform
An LLM testing platform for engineering teams to pinpoint which iteration of their app to put in production. Launch announcement
Maritime Fusion: Fusion reactors for ships
Designed specifically for maritime applications, this reactor bridges the gap between achieving breakeven fusion and commercial viability. Launch announcement
Mecha Health: Foundation models for x-ray analysis
Mecha Health helps radiologists save time and effort by producing draft reports of medical images using AI. Launch announcement
Orbital Operations: High Thrust Space Vehicles for Satellite Defense
Orbital Operations is building a high-thrust, reusable space vehicle that will be stationed in orbit to perform rapid dynamic space operations for the military. Launch announcement
Gulp: Real-time self-improvements for AI agents
A framework that helps your AI agents learn in real-time to make them better, faster, and more responsive. Launch announcement
Red Barn Robotics: A Roomba for weeds on a farm
Red Barn Robotics provides autonomous intra-row weeding services to help farmers increase yields and reduce their labor costs. More details.
Sift: AI powered datadog
Transforms your logs from overwhelming chaos to clear, powerful insights to intelligently eliminate noise and highlight critical data. Launch announcement
TensorPool: Vercel for GPUs
The easiest way to use GPUs - just describe your job and we handle all the GPU orchestration and execution at half the cost. Launch announcement.
Until next season, congratulations to all the founders that presented today.
