Agents are the second largest bet in the 2026 cohort. Our database counts 137 AI agent startups across Y Combinator's four 2026 batches: companies building AI employees, workflow agents, support agents, coding agents and agent infrastructure. 98 of the 137 sit in B2B, with fintech and consumer at 11 each. This page lists twenty of them and counts the rest, and the full 137 are on the agents category page.

1. Twenty agent startups from the list

Ordered newest batch first, the way the category page lists all 137. Each name links to a company page with the founders and the full story.

CompanyWhat it doesBatchHQ
Acyclic LabsAgent swarms that make long-running tasks exponentially fasterYC Fall 2026London, England, United Kingdom
Adside.aiAI agency that manages paid ads on Meta, Google, LinkedIn, etc.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
Altair HealthStripe for medical billingYC Fall 2026Austin, TX, USA
AnywhereYour places, plans, friends and memories, all on one living mapYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
AxiomatWe make AI that never hallucinates.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
CoveraAI-native OS for insurance brokersYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
Cyclona phone where AI is the interfaceYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
DefiniteBuild everyday back-office agents on one live model of your booksYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
ElimentaryAgents that run middle/back-office operations for Private CapitalYC Fall 2026New York City, NY, USA
EvardiAgents that engineer the grid edgeYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
FaradayIndustrial AI coordinating humans, agents, and machinesYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
FrontrunnerCursor for GTMYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
GodHandsTurn how your team works into playbooks and agents.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
Grep AISelf-improving agents that automate your growth bottlenecksYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
HillStarAgents to help utilities make better buying decisions.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
JinkoTravel Search & Booking Infrastructure for AI agentsYC Fall 2026Paris, Île-de-France, France
KiwiKiwi is your GTM agent's favorite data engineer.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
Lantern AITurn Your Taste Into HiresYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
LarkAI agents that automate workflows for distributorsYC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA
OpenCrawlHigh-performance hyper-personalized search indexes.YC Fall 2026San Francisco, CA, USA

2. Agents arrive in every batch

Unlike some categories, agents are not a one batch story. Summer 2026 brought 37 agent startups, Spring and Fall 36 each, and Winter 28. The mix shifts by batch: later batches lean harder into agents for specific jobs (sales, support, compliance, operations) rather than general purpose assistants. That is the vertical pattern applied to agents: the narrower the job, the clearer the buyer.

3. What to watch

Watch pricing and proof. Agent startups sell outcomes, so the listings worth revisiting are the ones that name a job, a buyer and a measurable result in their one line description. The category page tracks all 137 as the cohort matures, and new launches join it free.

4. The kinds of agents in the 137

Read the one line descriptions and four families emerge. Customer facing agents run support and success conversations. Revenue agents prospect, qualify and follow up. Operations agents move work between systems: documents, tickets, schedules, approvals. And a fourth family sells the scaffolding other agents run on: evaluation, memory, guardrails and control planes. The first three sell outcomes to a named department; the fourth sells to the first three.

Shortlisting from this page: pick the family, then the job, then the batch. A Fall 2026 support agent and a Winter 2026 support agent are not the same vintage, and the later one has usually learned from the earlier one's landing page. The company pages carry the founders, which is where the real diligence starts.

Source: AIToolGuide 2026 startups database (513 AI companies), compiled from Y Combinator 2026 batch listings and the TrustMRR and Indie Hackers marketplaces.