Y Combinator

Congrats to @kiwicopple, @AntWilson, and @supabase on their $150 million round at a $10.65 billion valuation! More than 13 million developers use Supabase as the backend for their apps. They're adding more than 1 million users and over 4 million databases every month, and 70% of new databases are now created by agents or AI-driven tools. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/business/dealbook/data-center-ai-bonds.html

This week’s Paper Club is all about alternative compute. Modern AI has been shaped by a tight coupling between transformers, backpropagation, and GPUs. But as compute efficiency starts to plateau, there may be very different ways to build the machines that come next. We explore what AI compute could look like beyond conventional digital hardware through optical systems that use light to perform computation, neuromorphic architectures inspired by the brain, and experiments teaching living brain cells to play Doom. 00:07 — @FrancoisChauba1: Why Alternative Compute? 03:38 — Beyond Backpropagation 08:08 — Zero-Order Optimization and SOMA 15:06 — Ilker Oguz: Computing With Light 19:27 — Why Optical Computing Isn’t Everywhere Yet 22:23 — Building a Diffusion Model With Light 30:03 — Optical Computing Q&A 39:00 — @AlokVasudev: What Is Neuromorphic Computing? 45:23 — What the Brain Can Teach Us About Chips 49:35 — Where Neuromorphic Computing Stands Today 54:24 — Neuromorphic Computing Q&A 1:04:24 — @vytalow: Teaching Brain Cells to Play Doom 1:07:48 — Training Biological Neurons With Reinforcement Learning 1:12:28 — How Brain Cells Learn From Feedback 1:15:40 — Biological Computing Q&A

Startup School is coming to Taipei on November 12! 🇹🇼 Hear from founders like @andyfang of DoorDash, @jeffchanginvest of Vest, @moseslo of Xendit, @mchiang0610 of Ollama, and more. And join builders and hackers from across Asia for a day of talks and sessions with YC partners.

Gumloop (YC W24) is building a platform that lets employees across a company build and share AI agents, while giving IT control over the data, permissions, and infrastructure behind them. Today it’s used by companies including Shopify, Gusto, and Instacart to automate work across sales, customer success, operations, and more. In this fireside, @gumloop co-founders @MaxBrodeurUrbas and @rbehal1729 joined @gustaf to share how they built Gumloop before models were ready for agents, then found product-market fit as the technology caught up. They talk about landing early enterprise customers, making companies AI-native, and why the people closest to the work should be the ones automating it. 00:00 — The AI Agent Builder for Every Team 03:38 — From Workflow Automation to Enterprise AI 07:20 — What It Takes to Win Enterprise Customers 11:02 — How the Founders Met and Got Into YC 15:00 — How Gumloop Uses Its Own Agents 18:02 — Landing Shopify and Rethinking Pricing 21:23 — Fundraising and the Limits of Staying Lean 24:35 — Letting Employees Automate Their Own Work 27:43 — Building Agents Companies Can Control 31:23 — Getting IT to Say Yes

Congrats to @sensible_bio (YC S21) on their $47M Series A! They engineer living cells to manufacture mRNA, turning the cell itself into the factory. Today's mRNA is made in cell-free processes that work fine for vaccines, where doses are small. The next generation of mRNA medicines, like in vivo CAR-T and gene editing, needs far higher doses and far purer mRNA than those methods can deliver. Sensible is closing that gap with a platform that can already produce around 1,000 mRNA sequences per week. https://endpoints.news/sensible-bio-secures-47m-series-a-for-mrna-therapy-manufacturing-platform

Applied Electrodynamics is building cameras that can see through walls and other opaque materials. Using radio waves, they can locate studs, pipes, cables, and junction boxes behind surfaces like drywall or marble and turn it into a dimensionally accurate 3D model.

Consider this a sign. https://ycombinator.com/apply

Congrats to @multiplylabs (YC S16) on their $75M Series B! They build robots that manufacture the world's most complex drugs, including gene therapies and mRNA treatments. AI is speeding up drug discovery, but someone still has to physically make the medicines, and today that work mostly happens by hand. Manual production is slow, vulnerable to contamination, and can cost more than $1 million per dose for some gene therapies. Multiply's robots run that production inside facilities at AstraZeneca and Legend Biotech. https://www.businessinsider.com/see-the-pitch-deck-drug-manufacturing-startup-used-raise-75m-2026-10

Congrats to @vitalize_care (YC W23) on their $31M Series A! They're building the AI operating system for hospital staffing, scheduling, and capacity. Nurse managers often lose two to four hours every day building schedules by hand, time that could be going to patients. Vitalize now manages millions of shifts a week across 15+ health systems, saving clinical leaders more than 2,000 hours a day. St. Luke's Health cut its overtime and agency labor spend by 54% within 12 weeks. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/vitalize-secures-31m-scale-ai-powered-operating-system-hospital-staffing-and-scheduling

One week left to apply to YC Winter '27! YC founders get: 🔸 $500K in funding 🔸 $12M+ in tokens, credits & deals 🔸Partners who were founders first, and are in your corner for life 🔸 Access to the best founder community in the world 🔸 Demo Day in front of thousands of top investors Apply by Nov 2: http://ycombinator.com/apply

Your first enterprise customer is the hardest one to get. At YC, they come to you. Last week we launched Early Access Network: 30 companies, 100+ enterprise leaders, one room, months before Demo Day. Now part of every YC batch. Apply for W27 by Nov 2: https://ycombinator.com/apply

Applications for the YC Winter 2027 batch are now open! Apply by November 2: https://ycombinator.com/apply