Investors have flocked to Y Combinator’s Demo Days for years to get their hands on promising startups building cool tech. After all, the accelerator has produced some of the biggest tech companies in the world, from Airbnb and Reddit to Dropbox, Zapier and Stripe.
That’s why we make it a point to keep an eye on the event to spot the most interesting companies from each batch. As I’ve been doing nearly every quarter now that the accelerator has moved to four cohorts a year, I asked nearly a dozen investors which startups were most in demand at Y Combinator’s Winter 2026 Demo Day earlier this week.
To ensure our list included truly sought-after standouts, a company had to be flagged as a ‘fave’ by at least two different venture capital investors to make the cut.
As for valuations, I’m hearing that at least a couple startups have raised funds at a $100 million price tag, though notably, those startups are already bringing in run-rate revenue of $1 million or more. Even for the less buzzy startups not on this list, the “default” valuation this quarter seems to be around $30 million, which investors told me is roughly two-fold the current seed market average.
Without further ado, here’s the list:
Beyond Reach Labs
What it’s building: Deployable solar arrays for satellites.
Why it’s a fave: The startup claims it has developed solar arrays that are the size of a dining table at launch, but unfold to the size of a football field when they reach orbit. The founders say their system can increase available power ten-fold while slashing costs by 88%. Beyond Reach already has a flight planned for 2027, and says it has secured $325 million in letters of intent from leading space companies.
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Byteport
What it’s building: A ridiculously fast file transfer protocol.
Why it’s a fave: According to Byteport’s founder Jayram Palamadai, existing file transfer protocols like TCP are too slow for the AI age. That’s why he built DART, short for Dynamic Accelerated Record Transfer, which can apparently transfer large files at an average of 10 times faster than TCP, and even up to 1,500 times faster on “reliable connections.”
Hex Security
What it’s building: Continuous AI-powered security testing tools.
Why it’s a fave: To fight hackers using AI to launch non-stop cyberattacks, Hex is building AI agents that can act as penetration testers, constantly probing for vulnerabilities and security gaps in companies’ infrastructure. By automating what was once a manual process performed infrequently, Hex claims it can prevent attacks at a fraction of the cost. The startup claims it has crossed run-rate revenue of more than $1 million in just eight weeks, which may be why VC investors, as one person told me, “were fighting” to invest in the company.
Grazemate
What it’s building: Autonomous drones to herd and monitor cattle.
Why it’s a fave: Moving cattle on massive ranches is an expensive and dangerous undertaking, often involving helicopters and motorbikes. GrazeMate’s founder, who grew up on a 6,000-head cattle station in Australia, saw a way to make life easier for ranchers, so he dropped out of college where he was pursuing a robotics degree.
GrazeMate’s drones can automatically guide cattle to different areas of a ranch, estimate animals’ weight, grass availability and growth, and can follow pre-specified route plans.
GRU Space
What it’s building: Permanent lunar infrastructure, starting with a hotel on the Moon.
Why it’s a fave: “Humanity will become interplanetary. It’s a matter of not if, but when, and the time is now,” says GRU Space founder Skyler Chan, a recent Berkeley grad who previously built software at Tesla and worked on NASA-funded space tech.
Chan claims his startup has developed a “moon factory” that can turn lunar soil into structural bricks, which he plans to use to build a luxury hotel on the moon as a “wedge” for broader lunar infrastructure. GRU’s astronomical aspirations, including its goal to open the first lunar hotel by 2032, have made it one of the most talked-about startups of this YC batch. The company has already secured $500 million in letters of intent, an invitation to the White House, and even a reservation from the Trump family.
Luel
What it’s building: A marketplace for human-captured data to train multimodal AI.
Why it’s a fave: Founded by two UC Berkeley dropouts, Luel is building a data marketplace that connects AI model makers with contributors who can submit “daily-life” activities, such as ironing or patient-doctor conversations, to provide audio, video and image data. The company claims it’s generating ARR of nearly $2 million within six weeks, fueled by high demand from robotics and voice AI labs.
Pax Historia
What it’s building: An alternative-history strategy game powered by AI.
Why it’s a fave: Pax Historia allows users to rewrite history in a way traditional strategy games can’t. Using generative AI, the game responds to infinite, complex geopolitical scenarios, from “What if Rome never fell?” to “What if the USA took over Greenland?” The founders claim the game currently attracts 35,000 daily users who have played nearly 20 million rounds.
Stilta
What it’s building: Agentic AI for intellectual property and patent lawyers.
Why it’s a fave: Stilta’s founders claim that patent disputes can cost up to $4 million per case, largely due to manual document review costs. The startup says its AI agent can search and analyze patents across databases and scientific literature, saving both time and legal fees.
The company’s agents are already being used by IP lawyers at pharmaceutical giant Roche. For investors, another attractive aspect is that the founders hail from Sweden — recent Swedish successes like Lovable and Legora have created something of a “halo effect” around companies from the region, one VC investor said.
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![Sam Altman’s project World looks to scale its human verification empire. First stop: Tinder. | TechCrunch
At a trendy venue near the San Francisco pier, Sam Altman’s verification project World celebrated its next evolution and rapid expansion of its ambitions. And it’s starting with Tinder.
Tools for Humanity (TFH), the company behind the World project, announced Friday plans to integrate its verification tech into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, business organizations, email, and other arenas of public life.
“The world is getting close to very powerful AI, and this is doing a lot of wonderful things,” said Altman, speaking before a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are also heading to a world now where there’s going to be more stuff generated by AI than by humans,” he added. “I’m sure many of you [have had moments] where you’re like, ‘Am I interacting with an AI or a person, or how much of each, and how do I know?”
World (formerly Worldcoin) distinguishes itself from many of its ID verification peers by offering the ability to verify that a real, living human is using a digital service while still protecting that person’s anonymity. There is some complex cryptographic alchemy behind this (something called “zero-knowledge proof-based authentication”). The upshot: The company is creating what it calls “proof of human” tools, which are mechanisms that can verify human activity in a world rife with AI agents and bots.
Its chief tool for verification is a spherical digital reader called the Orb that scans a user’s eyes, converting their iris into a unique and anonymous cryptographic identifier (known as a verified World ID). This can then be used to access World’s services, although users can also access World’s app without one.
Altman kept his remarks brief on Friday (TFH’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Blania, was absent due to a last-minute hand surgery, Altman said). He then turned much of the presentation over to World’s chief product officer, Tiago Sada, and his team.
Sada explained that World was launching the newest version of its app (the last version was launched at an event in December), along with a plethora of new integrations for its technology.
World has been preparing, for some time, to deploy a verification service for dating apps — most notably, Tinder. Last year, Tinder launched a World ID pilot program in Japan. That pilot was apparently a success because World announced that Tinder would be launching its verification integration in global markets —including the U.S. The program integrates a World ID emblem into the profiles of users who have gone through its verification processes, thus authenticating them as a real person.
Image Credits:World
World is also courting the entertainment industry by launching a new feature called Concert Kit, where musical artists can reserve a certain number of concert tickets for World ID-verified humans. This is designed to ensure that fans are safe from scalpers who often use automated ticket-buying bots to scarf up seats. Concert Kit is compatible with major ticketing systems, including Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and the company is promoting it via partnerships with 30 Seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars — both of whom plan to use it for their upcoming tours.
The event was full of many other announcements, including some aimed at businesses. A Zoom/World ID verification integration seeks to battle a supposed deepfake threat to business calls, and a Docusign partnership is designed to ensure signatures come from authentic users.
The company is also working on a number of features in anticipation of the Wild West of the agentic web, including one called “agent delegation,” in which a person can delegate their World ID to an agent to carry out online activities on their behalf. A partnership with authentication firm Okta has also created a system (currently in beta) that verifies that an agent is acting on behalf of a human. The system is set up so that a World ID can be tied to a specific agent and then, when the agent goes out into the web to operate on that person’s behalf, websites will know a verified person is behind the behavior, said Okta’s chief product officer, Gareth Davies, at the event.
So far, it’s been difficult for World to scale, due largely to the verification process itself. For much of the company’s history, to get its gold standard, you had to travel to one of its offices and have your eyeballs scanned by an Orb — a fairly inconvenient (not to mention weird) experience.
Image Credits:World
However, World has continually made moves to increase the ease and incentive structure for verification. In the past, it offered its crypto asset, Worldcoin, to some members who signed up and has distributed its Orbs into big retail chains so that users can verify themselves while they’re out shopping or getting a coffee. Now the company is announcing that it is significantly expanding its Orb saturation in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service where interested users could have World bring an Orb to their location for remote verification.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Sada also shared that World has attempted to solve the scaling problem by creating different tiers of verification. The highest tier is Orb verification, but below that, World has previously offered a mid-level tier, which uses an anonymized scan of an official government ID via the card’s NFC chip.
The company also introduced a low-level tier, or what Sada called “low friction”— meaning low effort, I guess, but also “low security” — which involves merely taking a selfie.
Selfie Check, which Sada’s team presented during the event, is designed to maintain user privacy.
“Selfie is private by design,” said Daniel Shorr, one of TFH’s executives, during the presentation. “That means that we maximize the local processing that’s happening on your device, on your phone, which means that your images are yours.”
Selfie verification obviously isn’t new, and fraudsters have long managed to spoof it. “Obviously, we do our best, and it’s like one of the best systems that you’ll see for this. But it has limits,” Sada told TechCrunch. Developers looking to integrate World’s services can choose from the three different verification tiers depending on the level of security that’s important to them, he noted.
#Sam #Altmans #project #World #scale #human #verification #empire #stop #Tinder #TechCrunchDocuSign,sam altman,Tinder,World,Worldcoin,zoom Sam Altman’s project World looks to scale its human verification empire. First stop: Tinder. | TechCrunch
At a trendy venue near the San Francisco pier, Sam Altman’s verification project World celebrated its next evolution and rapid expansion of its ambitions. And it’s starting with Tinder.
Tools for Humanity (TFH), the company behind the World project, announced Friday plans to integrate its verification tech into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, business organizations, email, and other arenas of public life.
“The world is getting close to very powerful AI, and this is doing a lot of wonderful things,” said Altman, speaking before a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are also heading to a world now where there’s going to be more stuff generated by AI than by humans,” he added. “I’m sure many of you [have had moments] where you’re like, ‘Am I interacting with an AI or a person, or how much of each, and how do I know?”
World (formerly Worldcoin) distinguishes itself from many of its ID verification peers by offering the ability to verify that a real, living human is using a digital service while still protecting that person’s anonymity. There is some complex cryptographic alchemy behind this (something called “zero-knowledge proof-based authentication”). The upshot: The company is creating what it calls “proof of human” tools, which are mechanisms that can verify human activity in a world rife with AI agents and bots.
Its chief tool for verification is a spherical digital reader called the Orb that scans a user’s eyes, converting their iris into a unique and anonymous cryptographic identifier (known as a verified World ID). This can then be used to access World’s services, although users can also access World’s app without one.
Altman kept his remarks brief on Friday (TFH’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Blania, was absent due to a last-minute hand surgery, Altman said). He then turned much of the presentation over to World’s chief product officer, Tiago Sada, and his team.
Sada explained that World was launching the newest version of its app (the last version was launched at an event in December), along with a plethora of new integrations for its technology.
World has been preparing, for some time, to deploy a verification service for dating apps — most notably, Tinder. Last year, Tinder launched a World ID pilot program in Japan. That pilot was apparently a success because World announced that Tinder would be launching its verification integration in global markets —including the U.S. The program integrates a World ID emblem into the profiles of users who have gone through its verification processes, thus authenticating them as a real person.
Image Credits:World
World is also courting the entertainment industry by launching a new feature called Concert Kit, where musical artists can reserve a certain number of concert tickets for World ID-verified humans. This is designed to ensure that fans are safe from scalpers who often use automated ticket-buying bots to scarf up seats. Concert Kit is compatible with major ticketing systems, including Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and the company is promoting it via partnerships with 30 Seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars — both of whom plan to use it for their upcoming tours.
The event was full of many other announcements, including some aimed at businesses. A Zoom/World ID verification integration seeks to battle a supposed deepfake threat to business calls, and a Docusign partnership is designed to ensure signatures come from authentic users.
The company is also working on a number of features in anticipation of the Wild West of the agentic web, including one called “agent delegation,” in which a person can delegate their World ID to an agent to carry out online activities on their behalf. A partnership with authentication firm Okta has also created a system (currently in beta) that verifies that an agent is acting on behalf of a human. The system is set up so that a World ID can be tied to a specific agent and then, when the agent goes out into the web to operate on that person’s behalf, websites will know a verified person is behind the behavior, said Okta’s chief product officer, Gareth Davies, at the event.
So far, it’s been difficult for World to scale, due largely to the verification process itself. For much of the company’s history, to get its gold standard, you had to travel to one of its offices and have your eyeballs scanned by an Orb — a fairly inconvenient (not to mention weird) experience.
Image Credits:World
However, World has continually made moves to increase the ease and incentive structure for verification. In the past, it offered its crypto asset, Worldcoin, to some members who signed up and has distributed its Orbs into big retail chains so that users can verify themselves while they’re out shopping or getting a coffee. Now the company is announcing that it is significantly expanding its Orb saturation in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The company also promoted a service where interested users could have World bring an Orb to their location for remote verification.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Sada also shared that World has attempted to solve the scaling problem by creating different tiers of verification. The highest tier is Orb verification, but below that, World has previously offered a mid-level tier, which uses an anonymized scan of an official government ID via the card’s NFC chip.
The company also introduced a low-level tier, or what Sada called “low friction”— meaning low effort, I guess, but also “low security” — which involves merely taking a selfie.
Selfie Check, which Sada’s team presented during the event, is designed to maintain user privacy.
“Selfie is private by design,” said Daniel Shorr, one of TFH’s executives, during the presentation. “That means that we maximize the local processing that’s happening on your device, on your phone, which means that your images are yours.”
Selfie verification obviously isn’t new, and fraudsters have long managed to spoof it. “Obviously, we do our best, and it’s like one of the best systems that you’ll see for this. But it has limits,” Sada told TechCrunch. Developers looking to integrate World’s services can choose from the three different verification tiers depending on the level of security that’s important to them, he noted.
#Sam #Altmans #project #World #scale #human #verification #empire #stop #Tinder #TechCrunchDocuSign,sam altman,Tinder,World,Worldcoin,zoom](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-17-at-1.55.00-PM.png?w=680)






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