- Chase Weir launches trutility to hold distributed energy assets long term
Distributed Sun contributed a GW-scale pipeline and operating assets; the announcement gives no cash round, valuation or outside investor.
- Bluecore Energy raised $10M to test its floating nuclear reactor at Long Beach
Bluecore Energy is testing an unfueled prototype at Long Beach before the harder work of licensing a commercial reactor.
- Divine plans public launch for August 20, with Taco Bell as first brand partner
Divine's August 18 release says Evan Henshaw-Plath and Liz Sweigart plan to remove invite codes on August 20 as the Nostr-based video app bans AI-generated posts and tests its first brand collaboration with Taco Bell.
- Startup Spotlight: Sellara is building AI agents for the work after a Wall Street trade
Sellara's former Citi bankers are building specialized AI agents for trade capture and reconciliation, backed by a16z Speedrun.
- Amp holds SOC 2 Type II without requiring pull requests
Amp, which [LinkedIn lists at 11-50 employees](https://www.linkedin.com/company/amp-code/), uses signed commits, automated checks and agent threads while skipping mandatory pull requests.
- Mythos AI assists towboat crews as Aurora deploys fully driverless trucks
Geoff Douglass's Mythos AI supplies advisory navigation for a crewed Mississippi towboat, while Chris Urmson's Aurora is expanding fully driverless Class 8 freight operations in Texas.
- YC-backed DAIVIN is building tankless dive gear around water electrolysis
Founder Leo Kankkunen has shown a prototype, while DAIVIN's own spec sheet says its 5-kilogram system remains conceptual.
- Trunk Tools expands construction AI from document search into workflow agents
Solo founder Sarah Buchner spent more than a decade in construction before expanding Trunk Tools from document search into connected agents for contractor workflows.
- Orion Sleep undercuts Eight Sleep with a $2,295 cooling cover
The startup combines repeat founders and $17.5 million in seed backing with early product validation, while its clinical case remains preliminary.
- Joby agrees to buy Resonant Sciences for $500 million to build defense arm
The deal moves hybrid and autonomous aircraft into a Dayton defense unit while JoeBen Bevirt's commercial team stays focused on air taxis.
- Former Qwen lead Junyang Lin launches Pragmatik Labs for digital and physical agents
HSG and Gaorong co-led the Shanghai lab's financing, with Tencent joining a founder-driven bet reportedly valued at $2 billion.
- Firefly Aerospace hits record $117.7M Q2 revenue, beating estimates by 34%, NASA awards mount
Revenue rose 45.5% sequentially as NASA, defense and lunar awards expanded Firefly's backlog; the company maintained 2026 guidance of $420 million to $450 million.
- Manus asks affected users to back up data before Meta separation
Manus is telling affected users to back up recent data before an August 23-24 deletion window as it separates from Meta and its founders reportedly seek financing for a buyback.
- Rippling sues Runlayer over three patents after trade-secret accusation
The dueling cases grew out of a nearly yearlong product trial that ended without a contract and left both sides preparing competing MCP gateways.
- Trax founders test Swish's basketball sensor in a six-month NBA pilot
The co-founders are testing fixed court hardware through NBA Launchpad, where a broader league partnership depends on the pilot results.
- Ara details cloud coding-agent workflows in July product update
Founded by Adi Singh and Sven Myhre, Ara is a two-person YC startup that documented its Cloud Coding Agent on July 7, with isolated sessions, stored context and human review.
- Startup Spotlight: Strive Robotics builds a verification layer between factory software and machines
Craig Cheney's MIT-trained team is connecting robotic work and verification directly to manufacturers' production systems.
- Metabase patches exploited SQL injection after Framework and Tally report data theft
The unauthenticated SQL injection flaw gave attackers a path from an analytics instance to connected database credentials and customer records.
- Sidekick runs factory work orders and training through plain text messages
Justin So says the YC-backed AI agent is live in more than 20 plants, where workers can report problems without installing an app.
- Oklo's Groves reactor reaches criticality, testing a faster path to isotope production
The Texas reactor went from groundbreaking to a sustained chain reaction in under a year, though its authorized power is capped at 100 watts.
- ProvenMetal opens seven-day US circuit-board service for defense teams
Trinity engineers Johnny Doyle and Will Carkner are coordinating U.S. suppliers and partners rather than starting with a factory.
- Nucleus exits stealth with a claimed 90-day humanoid factory deployment
Melvin Schwarz is building a control layer for putting third-party humanoid robots to work in existing industrial sites.
- TareBio joins YC's summer batch with a cancer vaccine program
Physician-scientist Eta Atolia is turning years of neoantigen and synthetic-biology research into a Los Angeles biotech.
- EdotEnv pitches market-derived RL environments for training financial agents
The YC Summer 2026 startup is betting shifting market regimes can train long-horizon agents better than static benchmarks.