Y Combinator W26 Batch: The Complete Company Database

Every company. Every founder. Every traction signal. Demo Day is March 24.

YC has funded 100+ billion-dollar companies.

Some of the most notable:

• Stripe — $159B

• Airbnb — ~$75B (public)

• Coinbase — ~$50B+ (public)

• DoorDash — ~$20B (public)

• Instacart, Dropbox, Kalshi, Reddit…

4.5% of YC startups become unicorns.

That’s nearly double the rate of other venture-backed seed companies. 45% go on to raise a Series A. One in four YC unicorns becomes a decacorn.

The combined valuation of YC alumni? Over $600 billion.

Multiple industry observers have suggested this W26 batch could produce 20 unicorns from 196 companies. A ~10% hit rate. Well above YC’s historical average.

I spent weeks building what I believe is the most comprehensive public database of this batch. 196 companies. 14 data columns each. Cross-referenced from the official YC directory, Extruct.ai, Hacker News, Best of Show HN, LinkedIn, X, Crunchbase, and individual company sites.

Here are 6 things that jumped out from the data.

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1. One company is doing $27M ARR. At the seed stage.

Pocket shipped 30,000+ hardware units in five months with 50% month-over-month growth. YC confirmed the numbers on X. Series B traction from a batch company.

2. The best-funded health startup raised $5.4M from Accel

Beacon Health brought in Accel and a Sequoia scout. Co-founded by a Stanford/Harvard physician and an ex-Amazon Alexa engineer. The largest healthcare raise in the batch by a wide margin.

3. Two 18-year-olds raised $1.4M before even joining YC

Synthetic Sciences (building “Claude Code for Science”) secured $1.4M pre-YC and another $500K from the standard deal. $1.9M total. Among the youngest founders in YC history with that level of pre-program funding.

4. Cardinal already has 40+ YC companies as paying customers

Their founders are 2x YC alumni (S23 and W26). Harvard and MIT CS grads. Selling to your own batch is one of the strongest early traction signals that exists.

5. Garry Tan is personally coaching one company

Captain (runcaptain.com) is Garry Tan’s personal coaching pick. Direct CEO-level involvement at the partner level. That rarely happens.

6. Hardware is everywhere

Moon hotels. Tankless dive gear. Cattle-mustering drones. Strength wearables by ex-Tesla Cybertruck engineers. Space solar arrays that grow to football-field size in orbit. About 14% of the batch builds physical products. YC is actively diversifying beyond pure software.

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What You Get as a Premium Subscriber

This is the database I wish existed when I started tracking YC batches as an angel investor.

The downloadable Excel covers all 196 W26 companies with 14 data columns:

Company, Website, HQ, YC Sector, YC Sub-category, Description, Founders, Founder Backgrounds, Funding Raised, Traction & KPIs, Stage, Key Competitors, Notes & Context

Plus a Summary & Key Stats sheet:

• 📊 Traction leaderboard ranked by verified KPIs: ARR, DAU, units shipped, pilot revenue, community engagement

• 💰 13 verified funding rounds beyond the standard YC deal (from $250K to $5.4M)

• ⚠️ 4 funding claims flagged as erroneous or unverified so you know what to trust

• 👤 YC partner assignments with activity levels (Tyler Bosmeny: 20+, Jared Friedman: 15+, Ankit Gupta: 10+)

• 🎯 Garry Tan’s personal coaching pick identified

• 📍 Location breakdown (66% SF, 6% NYC, 15% remote)

• 🏷️ Competitor mapping for every company with known rivals

• 🔄 Pivots tracked (4 companies changed direction mid-batch)

The article below gives you the full analysis with sector-by-sector breakdowns, founder highlights, engagement rankings, and the complete 196-company directory.

If you’re an investor scouting pre-Demo Day deal flow, a founder tracking competitive landscape, or an operator evaluating the next wave of tools: this saves you 40+ hours of research.

Premium subscribers get immediate access. Free 7-day trial available

Get Full Access to the Database (YC W26’ 196 startups) and Study 👇