Startups
Companies to watch, momentum, milestones.
- 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.
- Omanta Health maps patient records and genomics to potential therapies
The YC S26 entrant says its system combines longitudinal records, personal genomics and scientific literature to map disease drivers and therapies.
- Blue Water Autonomy wins seat on Navy's $40 million ocean-mapping contract
Blue Water Autonomy secured one of six seats on a two-year contract with a shared $40 million ceiling; task orders will be competed among the awardees.
- Molagri launches virus-like pesticide platform for resistant crop pests
The YC S26 company is adapting coronavirus-era structural biology to target insect guts, with its first grower LOI and laboratory viruses produced.
- RuntimeWire logs 205,000 pageviews while testing a one-person newsroom
Founder Ryan Merket says RuntimeWire has no revenue yet and is betting on developer-tool ads, job listings and sponsorships.
- Balaji Srinivasan signs Kazakhstan memorandum after Johor shuts Network School
Johor authorities revoked NSO Malaysia's Forest City license on July 22; Kazakhstan's five-year memorandum gives Srinivasan a new government-backed venue.
- Paul Graham's 2023 essay gives founders a four-step problem-selection framework
Paul Graham wrote the July 2023 essay as a guide for ambitious work in any field. Its four-step framework still gives founders a useful test for choosing and exploring problems.