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gary

T2 · manager / operator

Gary (likely Gary Tan, CEO of Y Combinator) hosts the 'How to Build the Future' series, interviewing frontier technology founders. He introduced Max Hodak as co-founder of Neuralink and founder of Science, and guided the conversation through BCI technology, Neuralink's origins, and Science's three-pillar pipeline.

14 calls·9 names·100% bull·last heard 8 days ago·Y Combinator
track record

no scored calls yet — needs a stated position or a categorical verdict, with a matured window vs SPY

top calls

highest conviction · one per company
1sthigh conviction
$PLOYPloyposition

YC CEO endorses Ploy as must-use marketing platform for startups

Ploy's AI-driven marketing automation — combining website generation, SEO, and agent-ready infrastructure — solves a critical pain point for founders who lack marketing expertise, making it a default choice for early-stage companies.

Y Combinator2026-06episode →
2ndhigh conviction
$AGENT-MAILAgent Mailposition

Agent Mail explodes as first email infrastructure built natively for AI agents

Traditional email providers intentionally block automation; Agent Mail built the first agent-native inbox, enabling OpenClaw and other agents to authenticate and communicate — a foundational primitive for the emerging agent economy.

Y Combinator2026-02episode →
3rdhigh conviction
$BOOST-ROBOTICBoost Robotic

Boost Robotic fine-tunes Physical Intelligence models for data center cabling robots

Robotics foundation models (PI) require vertical-specific fine-tuning on proprietary real-world data to achieve the real-time reliability needed for tasks like data center cabling, where errors cause physical damage.

Y Combinator2026-09episode →

most discussed · click a bar to filter

  • $CRM
  • $BOOST-ROBOTIC
  • $SCALE-AI
  • $MERCOR
  • $JUICEBOX

recurring themes

  • AI Agents1
  • AI Coding Agents1
  • AI Economics & Business Models1
14 total
$CRM
···
Salesforce
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Salesforce becoming AI harness as agents drive system-of-record value
Salesforce's system-of-record moat is intact and strengthening as AI agents become primary software users; Slack's collaboration data gives Salesforce a harness advantage where agents do work inside the platform.
"Salesforce is super interesting because uh I think they started releasing their own Slack harness, Slack AI harness. ... Ben off has a pretty big advantage in that you a lot of th…"
16:24
$BOOST-ROBOTIC
Boost Robotic
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Boost Robotic fine-tuning robotics foundation models for data center cabling
Boost Robotic builds robots for data center cabling that require fine-tuning foundation models on custom environment data to achieve real-time reliability in specific physical settings.
"I have this company called Boost Robotic that build robots for data centers like doing the cabling. It is possible for these robots to work. It's better to get a model that's fine…"
27:18
$CRM
···
Salesforce
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Salesforce moat intact as system-of-record transforms into AI agent harness via Slack
Salesforce's system-of-record moat holds because agents will use software more than humans; Slack's collaboration data and new AI harness position CRM to capture the agent-as-customer paradigm shift.
"Salesforce is super interesting because uh I think they started releasing their own Slack harness, Slack AI harness. And so I think we're right at the beginning of like the next A…"
16:04
$BOOST-ROBOTIC
Boost Robotic
HIGHgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Boost Robotic fine-tunes Physical Intelligence models for data center cabling robots
Robotics foundation models (PI) require vertical-specific fine-tuning on proprietary real-world data to achieve the real-time reliability needed for tasks like data center cabling, where errors cause physical damage.
"I have this company called Boost Robotic that build robots for data centers like doing the cabling. It is possible for these robots to work. It's better to get a model that's fine…"
27:10
$SCALE-AI
Scale AI
HIGHgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Scale AI pioneered data labeling; now 12+ YC companies each earn $10M+ selling data/RL environments to labs
The data/RL environment category has exploded from Scale AI's 2016 niche to over a dozen YC companies generating $10M–$100M+ annually, as frontier labs spend billions on proprietary data and reinforcement learning environments.
"When YC funded scale back in 2016, this was like a tiny little niche thing... the last couple years has become a big category. We pulled the data recently and um just in the last…"
23:17
$MERCOR
Mercor
LOWgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Mercor scaling RL environment business alongside data labeling for frontier model training
Mercor expanded from data labeling into reinforcement learning environments, capturing part of the ~$1B lab spend on post-training data; RL environments for finance, coding, and robotics are becoming a persistent revenue stream.
"When YC funded scale back in 2016, this was like a tiny little niche thing... and then Mercor began to do it and then like a couple other companies, but the last couple years has…"
23:17
$JUICEBOX
Juicebox
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Juicebox AI recruiting agent doubling/tripling revenue per seat by automating full hiring workflow
Juicebox evolved from LLM-powered candidate search to an autonomous agent that contacts, schedules, and screens candidates; customers pay 2-3x more because the agent completes the job end-to-end rather than just providing a tool.
"A company that I'm seeing um having this effect is Juicebox, an AI recruiting tool... recently they've launched an agent product which is really taking off and the agent like does…"
20:40
$KNOX-METALS
Knox Metals
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Knox Metals rebuilding US metal supply chain for defense tech at software-like growth rates
Knox Metals is reshoring metal manufacturing in Detroit to serve the new defense tech startup ecosystem; legacy suppliers cannot match the speed new startups require, creating a Stripe-like opportunity for a modern, responsive metals supplier growing at software velocity.
"Knox Metals is like rebuilding America's metal supply chain. And they're doing it in in the heartland of America in in in Detroit where there's all these like empty factories that…"
8:26
$CRM
···
Salesforce
MEDgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Salesforce transforming into AI agent harness with Slack data moat
Salesforce is evolving from system of record into an AI harness where agents do work inside the platform, leveraging Slack's collaboration data as a moat; this could sustain SaaS valuations if the harness model holds.
"Salesforce is super interesting because uh I think they started releasing their own Slack harness, Slack AI harness. And so I think we're right at the beginning of like the next A…"
16:05
$LAMB-LABS
Lamb Labs
LOWgary·Y Combinator·8 days ago·The State of Startups in 2026
Lamb Labs developing custom AI processors as Nvidia alternative leveraging reduced precision trend
Lamb Labs is building new compute processors targeting the industry-wide shift to lower precision (FP8/FP2) where Nvidia's general-purpose architecture carries overhead; custom silicon can optimize for the ternary/low-precision workloads that dominate inference.
"There's this company that Tyler worked with called Lamb Labs that's building new processors for compute... there's another one that I'm working on this batch called bot that is tr…"
11:00
9
AI Agentstailwind
Autonomous AI agents are becoming economic actors creating a parallel agent economy
AI agents have crossed a threshold where they independently choose tools, make decisions, and transact — creating a swarm intelligence that mirrors human social coordination but at superhuman speed and scale, fundamentally reshaping go-to-market for all software.
9
AI Coding Agentstailwind
AI enables 400-1000x founder leverage, ushering in age of solo founder
Experienced founders can now 'clone themselves' via AI coding agents, compressing years of development into days and navigating idea mazes with 400-1000 virtual clones, fundamentally changing startup economics and founder demographics.
7
AI Economics & Business Modelsmixed
Agents may develop their own economy and currency, decoupling from human financial systems
As agents transact with each other at scale, they may create a native agent economy with its own medium of exchange, raising questions about the value of human money and legal standing of agent entities — a structural shift comparable to the transition from prehistory to recorded history.