4 Key Takeaways From Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 Request List

It’s always fascinating to see what Y Combinator sees fit to put on its regular “Request for Startups” lists, which outline the kinds of companies which YC and other investors are particularly interested in backing in a given period. 

“Unsurprisingly, YC’s summer 2025 request list is entirely focused on AI,” notes Heiko Garrelfs, tech M&A expert at Hampleton Partners. “The accelerator has been intimately involved with the generative AI revolution from the start, being the first investor in OpenAI, and its summer list pinpoints some of the specific AI use cases and startup types which are especially interesting to investors right now.”

Let’s consider four of the categories on the list which particularly stand out to us as particularly significant and disruptive.

This is the category on the list that’s sparked perhaps the most conversation among tech writers and insiders, which is understandable given the game-changing potential of full-stack AI companies. These are companies which, rather than developing and selling AI tools for verticals, are themselves largely made up of AI agents which handle entire value chains.

The YC list takes law as an example vertical, saying: “You could build an AI agent and sell it to law firms… Or, you could start your own law firm, staff it with AI agents, and compete with the existing law firms… Instead of selling to the dinosaurs, you could make them extinct.”

This year has in fact seen the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority approve a purely AI-driven law firm for the very first time. The caveat here is that Garfield.Law is not a full-service firm, but instead focuses on one specific aspect of law, namely small debt claims. However, the fact that it automates the whole process, from generating legal correspondence to guiding users through the court process, provides an eye-catching real-world example of how AI can manage tasks which were once the complex and esoteric preserve of expensive professionals. 

The displacement of human creatives by AI has been a hot-button issue since ChatGPT made its seismic debut. YC’s list acknowledges the existential nature of this moment but emphasises a different path: “As many designers are worried about AI replacing their jobs, the real opportunity is for designers to use AI themselves to launch their own products and build their own companies.”

The thinking here is that as “vibe coding” platforms continue to lower the barriers to entrepreneurship by allowing founders to create apps and websites without technical expertise, good design will become an increasingly important way for startups to differentiate themselves from the competition. 

This of course isn’t a new phenomenon in the digital realm – anyone old enough to remember the early days of the web will know that one of the reasons Google exploded in popularity was its clean and uncluttered interface, which set it apart from the likes of Yahoo.

Bearing the Google example in mind, it’s fitting that one prominent tech insider who highlighted the importance of design prior to the release of the YC list is Vanessa Cho of Google Ventures. She spoke last December about how good design “can help startups win funding” by reassuring investors that founders are prioritising consumer requirements and “know how to actually build a scalable product”.

Although we’re still early enough on the AI adoption curve for the prospect of chatting to digital staff rather than human beings to still be disconcerting to many consumers, investors clearly believe takeup is a matter of time. As the YC list puts it, “Talking to a voice AI bot feels like experiencing the future – similar to how it felt to ride an autonomous car for the first time”.

The race is currently on among startups seeking to establish dominance in this space. One example is Solda AI, which has created autonomous agents which can “close deals over voice, text, email and chat”. In April, the Berlin-based company secured a USD 4m seed round to further the development of voice agents which cover the whole sales process, from lead qualification to objection handling.

Another notable name is Play AI, a Silicon Valley startup whose voice agents have been trained for multiple sectors including hospitality, healthcare and real estate. The company received USD 21m in seed funding last year, and has since been acquired by Meta for an undisclosed sum.

As AI agents continue to soak up the spotlight, with much talk around whether SaaS will effectively evolve into AaaS (Agent as a Service), it’s understandable that investors are also interested in tools that allow organisations to forge their own agents in-house. 

Predicting that “soon, all companies will have one thing in common: every employee will build their own agents to automate the repetitive parts of their jobs”, the YC list goes on to say the accelerator is looking “to fund founders working on the infrastructure they'll use to do that: internal agent builders”.

One example of a startup doing exactly this is London-based Portia, whose cloud-based software development kit enables the rapid creation of enterprise agents able to execute workflows, interact with other software tools and request human input when necessary. In April, Portia raised USD 5.9m in investment, with the cash injection being used to grow its team of developers and develop more product features.

With AI developments happening at a breakneck pace, having expert guidance on what investors and acquirers are seeking is more important than ever. If you’re a founder or senior decision maker looking to take steps into the M&A market, our Sector Principal Heiko Garrelfs would love to hear from you. 

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