Last Updated: June 20, 2026 | New startups added every batch

5,668 companies. $600 billion in combined value. 82 unicorns. The YC startup directory isn't just a list, it's the most valuable startup database in tech.

Y Combinator has funded those 5,668 companies since 2005, and the directory tracking all of them is the single best tool for prospecting, competitive research, and idea-mining in the startup world. The problem is most people barely scratch its surface, and most "YC company list" articles are stale, thin, or just funnel you to a paid database.

This guide fixes that. You'll get the current 2026 data (the W26 and S26 batches, AI trends, survival stats), a breakdown of the portfolio by industry and batch with real named companies, and the exact workflows founders, salespeople, and investors use to turn the directory into deals. Everything here is free and actionable.

Table of Contents

• TL;DR: Best Use Cases
• What Is the YC Startup Directory?
• How to Use the Official YC Directory
• Directory Tools Compared
• YC by the Numbers (2026)
• Notable YC Exits & Acquisitions
• How YC Has Evolved (2010-2026)
• The W26 Batch Spotlight (2026)
• YC Startups by Industry (with Examples)
• YC vs Other Accelerators
• What You Actually Get from YC
• YC Startups by Batch
• Workflows: Sales, Investing, Research
• A Worked Example: The 30-Day Directory Sprint
• Email Templates That Get Replies
• Common Mistakes to Avoid
• Limitations: What the Directory Won't Tell You
• How to Verify a Company Is Really YC-Backed
• Frequently Asked Questions

TL;DR: Best Use Cases

Before you dive in, figure out which path is yours. The directory serves three audiences, and the fastest way to get value is to use it the way your role demands:

• Sales and BD: Filter recent batches in your vertical, build a list of companies that are actively hiring (a budget signal), and run personalized outreach. Skip to the sales workflow and email templates.
• Investors: Track a thesis by combining industry and batch filters, then monitor for traction signals. The industry breakdown and unicorn stats are your starting point.
• Founders: Mine the directory for validated problem spaces. If a dozen companies in one batch attack the same problem, that problem is real and funded. The W26 spotlight shows what YC is betting on right now.

What Is the YC Startup Directory?

The YC Startup Directory is a searchable database of every company that has gone through Y Combinator since the first batch in 2005. It lists company names, descriptions, batch years, locations, industry tags, team size, hiring status, and founder information for thousands of startups.

The official directory lives at ycombinator.com/companies, is completely free, and updates with every new batch. You can filter by batch, industry, region, team size, and whether a company is actively hiring. It is the authoritative source: YC maintains it, so it is always current and accurate.

What makes it special isn't just the data, it's what the data represents. Getting into YC is brutally competitive, with acceptance rates well under 2%. That means every company in the directory has already cleared an extremely high bar. When you browse the directory, you're browsing a pre-vetted list of the most promising startups on earth. That's why VCs use it for deal sourcing, sales teams use it for prospecting, and founders use it for ecosystem research and idea validation.

How to Use the Official YC Directory

The official directory is powerful, but the filters are easy to underuse. Here are five tactics that turn a giant list into a targeted shortlist.

Tactic 1: Stack industry + batch for competitive intel. Combine a single industry with a single batch (for example, all AI infrastructure companies from W26) to see exactly who YC funded in your space this cycle. This is the fastest way to map your competitive landscape or find partnership targets. If you're building in dev tools, filtering to "B2B / developer tools" plus the last two batches shows you every fresh competitor and adjacent player in minutes.

Tactic 2: Filter by "actively hiring" to find budget. Companies that are hiring have raised money and have momentum. For sales teams, this is the single best qualifying filter: a hiring YC startup has both the budget and the urgency to buy tools that help them move faster. For investors, hiring velocity is an early signal of traction.

Tactic 3: Sort by recency for responsive outreach. Newer companies respond to cold outreach because they haven't yet been buried under vendor pitches. A founder three weeks out of Demo Day still reads their inbox. A founder three years in has a wall of spam filters. If outreach is your goal, start with the most recent batch and work backward.

Tactic 4: Filter by region for local plays. Roughly 85-90% of YC companies are US-based, but you can isolate any region. This matters for local events, in-person meetings, or region-specific compliance products. Founders raising locally can also find nearby YC alumni for advice and intros.

Tactic 5: Use team size as a stage proxy. Team size is a rough proxy for stage and budget. A 2-3 person company is pre-seed and price-sensitive; a 20+ person company has a real budget and defined buying processes. Match your filter to your price point so you're not pitching enterprise tools to a two-person team.

Directory Tools Compared

Before you commit hours to one tool, know your options. Here's how the main ways to access YC data stack up.

For most people, the free official directory plus a disciplined workflow beats an expensive database. Paid tools make sense only when you need to export thousands of records with verified email addresses and your time is worth more than the subscription. Otherwise, filter the official directory and build your list manually, it's more current anyway.

YC by the Numbers (2026)

The scale of the YC portfolio is what makes the directory so valuable. Here's where things stand in 2026.

The 87% survival rate is what most people miss. Typical startups have roughly a 50% survival rate after five years. YC companies nearly double that. The acceptance bar is brutal, but once you're in, you're statistically far more likely to outlast non-YC peers. That's why the directory effectively functions as a pre-vetted list of durable businesses, not a graveyard of dead links.

The other stat worth internalizing: one in four YC unicorns goes on to become a decacorn ($10B+). YC doesn't just produce more billion-dollar companies than any other accelerator, it produces an outsized share of the truly massive ones. Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, DoorDash, and Instacart all came through the same directory you're about to browse.

Start here: The fastest way to put this guide to work is to open the official directory at ycombinator.com/companies, apply one industry filter plus the latest batch, and build your first shortlist in five minutes.

Notable YC Exits & Acquisitions

The directory's biggest names didn't start as obvious winners, and their exit numbers show why the portfolio compounds. A few of the largest YC outcomes:

The founding stories matter as much as the exits, because they show how unremarkable these companies looked at the start. Airbnb's founders sold branded cereal boxes to stay alive before the platform took off. DoorDash's Tony Xu delivered orders himself in the early days to understand the logistics. Brex started as a VR company before pivoting to corporate cards. Segment killed four separate products before landing on customer data infrastructure. The lesson for anyone browsing the directory: the company description you read today is rarely the idea the founders pitched at their interview. YC funds people who iterate, and the directory is full of pivots that became giants.

How YC Has Evolved (2010-2026)

Reading the directory chronologically is a crash course in startup history. In 2010, batches were small (a few dozen companies) and dominated by consumer web and early SaaS. By the late 2010s, batch sizes ballooned past 200 companies as YC scaled, and B2B SaaS and fintech took over as the marquee categories. The early 2020s brought a crypto wave, then a correction.

The defining shift of the 2020s is AI. In 2024, roughly 40% of companies touched AI. By the 2026 batches, that figure is ~60% and climbing, with the W26 batch tilting hard into AI infrastructure, hardware, and even explicit AGI labs. Acceptance has stayed brutally selective (well under 2%) even as application volume exploded, which is exactly why directory companies remain a high-signal list. If you want to predict the next wave, don't read trend reports, read the last two batches in the directory. The shift from "apps" to "infrastructure" to "deep tech" is visible right there in the company descriptions.

The W26 Batch Spotlight (2026)

The Winter 2026 batch is the most technically complex cohort in YC history. The headline numbers:

• 199 companies in the batch
• ~60% are AI companies, up from 40% in 2024
• 39 companies building the AI infrastructure layer
• 20 hardware startups and 3 AGI labs
• The sharpest tilt toward deep tech YC has ever shown
• Industry observers project ~20 unicorns from this single batch (a ~10% hit rate)

The takeaway for founders: AI is no longer a category within YC, it is the default. If you're building in AI infrastructure, agents, or applied AI for a specific vertical, you're in the same arena as the majority of the current batch. Differentiation now comes from distribution and a sharp wedge into a specific industry, not from "we use AI." Saying you use AI in 2026 is like saying you use the internet.

The deep-tech tilt is the real story. For most of YC's history, software-only companies dominated because they were cheap to start and fast to ship. W26 reverses that: hardware startups, robotics, and three explicit AGI labs signal that YC believes the next wave of defensible companies will be built on harder technical moats. For founders, that's a signal that "easy" software wedges are getting crowded and that technical depth is back in favor. For investors, W26 is where to look for companies with real IP rather than thin wrappers.

To browse the full W26 roster, use the batch filter on the official directory and select Winter 2026. Pair it with an industry filter to zero in on the segment you care about.

YC Startups by Industry (with Examples)

The YC portfolio skews heavily toward a handful of categories. Here's the breakdown with real named alumni so you can see the variety in each vertical and pattern-match against your own space.

AI & Machine Learning (~50% of recent batches)

The dominant category by a wide margin. It spans foundation models, AI infrastructure (the picks-and-shovels layer), autonomous agents, and applied AI built for specific industries like legal, healthcare, and finance. The variety here is enormous: some companies sell to other AI companies (vector databases, eval tooling, GPU orchestration), while others wrap models into a vertical workflow (an AI paralegal, an AI medical scribe, an AI sales rep). If you're a founder, this is the most crowded space, so a narrow vertical wedge beats a horizontal "AI assistant." If you're selling, AI companies buy infrastructure and dev tools aggressively.

B2B SaaS & Developer Tools (~35%)

The backbone of YC. Notable alumni include Stripe (payments infrastructure), GitLab (DevOps), Segment (customer data), Amplitude (product analytics), and PagerDuty (incident response). These are tools that other startups and enterprises pay for every month, which makes them durable, high-margin businesses. For sales teams, this category is gold: SaaS companies understand buying software and have short procurement cycles in their early years. For founders, the lesson from these winners is that boring infrastructure with deep utility outlasts flashy consumer apps.

Fintech & Insurtech (~15%)

One of YC's strongest categories for outsized exits. Notable alumni include Coinbase (crypto exchange, now public), Brex (corporate cards), Mercury (startup banking), and Razorpay (payments in India). Fintech wins because financial infrastructure is sticky, regulated (a moat), and monetizes on transaction volume. These companies raise large rounds early because the capital requirements are real. For investors, fintech is where YC has produced several of its decacorns.

Healthcare & Bio (~10%)

A growing category spanning diagnostics, digital health platforms, bio tooling, and care delivery. The pattern here is longer timelines but defensible businesses once they clear regulatory and clinical hurdles. Founders in this space use the directory to find both competitors and potential clinical or distribution partners. The recent batches have leaned into AI-for-bio: companies using machine learning for drug discovery, medical imaging, and clinical documentation.

Marketplaces & Consumer

The category that produced YC's most famous names: Airbnb (lodging), DoorDash (food delivery), Instacart (grocery), and Faire (wholesale marketplace). Two-sided markets are hard to start (you need supply and demand at once) but nearly unkillable once they reach liquidity. This category has cooled relative to AI and B2B in recent batches, but it remains where the largest consumer outcomes have come from. For founders, the lesson is that marketplace network effects are the strongest moat in the directory.

YC vs Other Accelerators

The directory is so valuable partly because of what YC is relative to its peers. Here's how the major accelerators compare:

The gap isn't just deal terms, it's the network. YC's alumni community (Bookface), the brand halo with investors, and the follow-on funding asymmetry (YC companies raise their next round faster and at higher valuations) compound in a way competitors haven't matched. That's the real reason the directory is worth studying: membership in it is a durable advantage, not just a logo.

What You Actually Get from YC

If you're a founder using the directory to decide whether to apply, here's what acceptance actually buys beyond the $500K:

• The network (Bookface): a private directory of thousands of founders who answer questions, make intros, and become your first customers. Many YC companies sell their first contracts to other YC companies.
• The brand halo: "YC-backed" shortcuts investor diligence and press coverage. It's a credibility stamp that opens doors.
• Demo Day: direct exposure to hundreds of top investors in a compressed window, which drives the follow-on funding asymmetry.
• Follow-on access: YC continues to invest in its best companies through later rounds and connects them to its investor network.
• The standard deal and standard docs: clean paperwork (SAFEs, standard terms) that makes fundraising faster and cheaper.

A common refrain among YC alumni is that the money is the least valuable thing YC provides, the network and the default trust from investors are what actually move the needle. That compounding network effect is exactly what the directory captures: every name in it is a node in that network.

YC Startups by Batch

YC runs multiple batches per year, each labeled by season and year. Recent batches and their defining character:

Reading batches over time tells a story. The S23 batch caught the first generative AI wave; by W25 and S25 the focus shifted to agents and vertical applications; and W26 pushed into hardware and deep tech. If you want to predict where the next wave is heading, watch what shifts batch to batch. To browse a complete roster, use the batch filter on the official directory, or see our full YC S23 batch list for a worked example of one cohort.

Workflows: Sales, Investing, Research

The directory is only as good as the workflow you run on it. Here are three proven daily and weekly routines.

The Sales Workflow (find 200 qualified leads in 20 minutes)

1. Filter to the two most recent batches in your target industry.
2. Add the "actively hiring" filter to isolate companies with budget.
3. Add a team-size filter that matches your price point.
4. Export the names into a spreadsheet (manually, or via a tool).
5. Pull founder names and emails, then run the personalized templates below.

Run this every Monday morning as new companies get added and your list stays fresh. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes once you've saved your filter combination.

The Investor Workflow (track a thesis)

1. Define your thesis as a filter combination (for example, "fintech, last 4 batches, US").
2. Check it on a regular cadence as new batches drop.
3. Note which companies are hiring fast or getting press, early traction signals.
4. Cross-reference against funding databases to spot who's raising.

The directory is your top-of-funnel; pair it with traction signals to build a watchlist before companies hit the radar of larger funds.

The Founder Workflow (mine for validated ideas)

1. Browse the latest batch by industry.
2. Count how many companies attack the same problem, repetition means a real, funded market.
3. Study their one-line descriptions to see how they position and differentiate.
4. Look for the gap: an underserved segment, geography, or use case the batch missed.

A Worked Example: The 30-Day Directory Sprint

Here's an illustrative 30-day workflow that shows how a sales team at an early-stage devtools company could turn the directory into pipeline. The numbers below are a realistic model, not a specific company's claim, use them to set your own expectations, not as a guarantee.

• Days 1-10 (list building): Filter to the last two batches in B2B SaaS, add the "actively hiring" filter, and build a list of ~120 companies signaling momentum and spend.
• Days 11-20 (outreach): Find founders via the directory's founder links and LinkedIn, then send personalized cold emails referencing each company's specific YC batch and product.
• Days 21-30 (closing): A well-targeted, personalized campaign to recent-batch founders can realistically convert in the 10-15% reply-to-meeting range, far above the 1-2% typical of generic cold outreach.

The mechanism behind the math is simple: recency plus personalization. Recent-batch founders still read their inbox, and referencing their specific batch proves you aren't blasting a generic list. That combination is what separates a double-digit reply rate from the low single digits most cold campaigns get. Your actual results depend on your product, fit, and copy, but the directory is what makes the targeting possible.

Email Templates That Get Replies

These are copy-paste ready. Swap the bracketed placeholders with company-specific detail, the more specific, the higher the reply rate. Use Template 1 for warm, congratulatory openers; Template 2 when you can name a real pain point; Template 3 when you have peer proof.

Template 1: The batch-specific opener (best for recent batches, expect 10-15% replies)

Hi [Name], saw [Company] in the [Batch] batch, congrats on the launch. We help [their type of company] with [specific outcome]. Worth a quick 15-min look?

Template 2: The problem-led opener (best when you know the pain, expect 8-12% replies)

Hi [Name], most [Batch] companies hit [specific problem] around month three. We built [product] to fix exactly that, [one-line proof]. Open to a short demo?

Template 3: The peer-proof opener (best when you have YC customers, expect 10-14% replies)

Hi [Name], we work with a few other [Batch] founders on [outcome]. Happy to share what's working for them, want me to send it over?

Template 4: The investor opener (for VCs reaching out to founders)

Hi [Name], I invest in [stage/sector] and have been tracking [specific trend] since [Batch] Demo Day. [Company] stood out for [specific reason]. Would love 20 minutes to learn more, no pitch, just understanding the space.

What to personalize every time: the batch, the product (in your words, not theirs), and one specific signal (a recent hire, a launch, a press mention). For more on getting founders to respond, see our guide on follow-up email templates that work.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Using stale lists. YC adds 400+ companies a year. A list from last year misses the freshest, most responsive prospects, and includes companies that may have pivoted or shut down. Always check the batch date and refresh your list each cycle.

2. Mass-blasting generic emails. The directory's entire value is personalization at scale. If your email doesn't reference the specific batch and product, you're just spam, and recent-batch founders are quick to mark it as such, hurting your domain reputation.

3. Ignoring older batches. Recent batches are responsive, but companies from three to five years ago have real budgets, established teams, and defined buying processes. Don't only chase the newest, the bigger deals often sit in older cohorts.

4. Treating it as only a sales tool. The directory is equally powerful for idea validation and competitive research. If ten companies in a batch attack the same problem, that's a market signal worth more than any trend report. Founders who skip this miss a free, validated idea source.

Limitations: What the Directory Won't Tell You

Being honest about what the directory can't do saves you wasted time. It is a powerful starting point, not a complete intelligence file.

• No revenue data. YC doesn't publish company revenue or MRR. You'll see what a company does, not how well it's doing. Cross-reference press, job postings, and funding announcements for traction signals.
• Limited failure detail. Companies that shut down often remain listed or quietly disappear without a clear "dead" tag. Don't assume every listing is an active, healthy business, verify recency.
• No live team changes. Founder departures, pivots, and acquisitions aren't always reflected immediately. The description you read may lag the company's current reality.
• No contact emails. The directory links to sites and founder profiles but doesn't hand you verified email addresses. You'll still need to do the outreach legwork.
• No funding amounts on-page. For round sizes and investors, you'll need Crunchbase or PitchBook alongside the directory.

Who should not rely on the directory: anyone who needs bulk verified contact data at scale (use a paid sales database), or anyone researching non-YC startups (it only covers YC alumni). For everyone else, it's the best free starting point that exists.

How to Verify a Company Is Really YC-Backed

"YC-backed" is a powerful credibility claim, and some companies stretch it. To confirm a company actually went through YC:

1. Check the official directory at ycombinator.com/companies, search the company name. If it's not there, be skeptical.
2. Confirm the batch. A real YC company has a specific batch (like S23 or W26). "We work with YC companies" or "YC-affiliated" is not the same as being in a batch.
3. Cross-check Crunchbase for the YC investment record and round details.
4. Distinguish YC the accelerator from other YC programs. Going through the core batch is different from attending a startup school course or applying unsuccessfully.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many companies are in the YC directory?

As of 2026, the directory contains 5,668 unique companies funded since 2005. Of those, 82 have reached unicorn status ($1B+ valuation), 17 have gone public, and the combined alumni valuation exceeds $600 billion.

Is the YC startup directory free?

Yes. The official directory at ycombinator.com/companies is completely free and updated with every batch. You can filter by batch, industry, location, team size, and hiring status without paying anything or creating an account.

How do I search the YC directory by industry or batch?

Use the sidebar filters on the official directory. You can stack filters, for example selecting "B2B / developer tools" plus "Winter 2026" to see every dev tool company in the latest batch. Combining industry and batch is the fastest way to map a specific segment.

Can I download the YC startup list as a CSV?

The official directory doesn't offer a built-in CSV export. Paid databases offer bulk export with verified contact data, but they're expensive and often less current than YC's own free directory. For most users, filtering the official directory and building a list manually is the best approach.

What percentage of YC companies succeed?

Roughly 87% of YC companies remain actively operating, nearly double the typical startup survival rate of about 50% after five years. Additionally, 45% raise a Series A and 4.5% reach unicorn status, far above industry averages.

How often is the YC directory updated?

The official directory is updated continuously and refreshed with every new batch. Since YC runs multiple batches per year and adds 400+ companies annually, the directory always reflects the current portfolio.

What is the latest YC batch?

The most recent batch is Winter 2026 (W26), with 199 companies. About 60% are AI companies, and it's the most technically complex cohort in YC history, including 20 hardware startups and 3 AGI labs.

How do I contact YC startup founders?

The directory links to each company's website and often the founders' profiles. From there you can find founders on LinkedIn or via their company email. Personalized outreach referencing their specific batch and product gets far higher reply rates than generic cold emails.

What's the difference between the YC directory and YCDB?

The official YC directory at ycombinator.com/companies is maintained by YC and is the most current and detailed source. YCDB is a third-party tool useful for quick lookups but with less depth. For accuracy, default to the official directory.

Can I filter YC companies by funding stage?

The official directory doesn't filter by funding round directly, but team size is a useful stage proxy (2-3 people is typically pre-seed, 20+ is post-Series A). For exact round data, pair the directory with Crunchbase or PitchBook.

Do all YC companies have to be in the directory?

Yes, every company that completes a YC batch appears in the official directory, though some that shut down may be removed or left without an active status. If a company claims YC backing but isn't listed, treat the claim with skepticism.

How do I find the most recent YC companies?

Sort or filter by the latest batch (currently W26, Winter 2026). Recent-batch companies are the freshest prospects for sales outreach and the clearest signal of where YC is investing right now.

Is being in the YC directory a sign a company is successful?

It's a sign a company cleared YC's sub-2% acceptance bar, which is meaningful, but not a guarantee of current success. Roughly 87% of YC companies stay operating, but the directory alone won't tell you revenue or growth. Verify with traction signals like hiring and press.

How accurate are the stats in this guide?

Figures come from YC's officially published track record (5,668 companies, 82 unicorns, 17 IPOs, $600B+ combined valuation, 87% operating rate) and W26 batch data reported during the 2026 Demo Day cycle. Exit valuations (Twitch ~$970M, PillPack ~$750M) reflect publicly reported acquisition figures.

Building something for YC founders? See our YC Demo Day pitch deck format, our YC application examples that got in, our YC application stress-test, and our YC interview questions guide.