Venture capital

Today, we're excited to launch a newly redesigned http://ycombinator.com! Our new site puts founders front and center and we want it to reflect what YC is really about: helping talented builders become great founders.

There’s a fundamental problem with global wealth creation: - Capital markets overwhelming benefit the rich - Working income growth is massively outpaced by capital income - Most people are unable to or priced out from participating in the best financial markets Everyone should have the same opportunities. It shouldn’t be determined by where you're from or how much money you have. The solution: tokenization, to unlock truly global markets for everyone.

You guys realize that all software is about to be free, right? And software is presently the most valuable capital asset, right? Guys?

here is a list of all startup accelerators you can apply to right now: - a16z Speedrun ($750k–$1M for ~7–10%) - Y Combinator ($500k for ~7%) - Pioneer ($20k for 1%) - LAUNCH ($125k for 6–7%) - The Mint ($500k for 10%) - AngelPad ($120k for 7%) - Techstars ($220k for ~5–7%) - 500 Global ($112.5k for 6%) - Entrepreneur First ($250k for ~9%) - South Park Commons ($400k for 7% + $600k guaranteed follow-on) - HFO Residency ($1M uncapped for 5% or $500k uncapped + 3%) - NEO ($600k via uncapped SAFE with $10M floor valuation) - Sequoia Arc ($1M) - PearX ($250k–$2M) - Betaworks AI Camp ($500k) - Greylock Edge (SAFE note + $500k+ in credits) - Conviction Embed ($150k uncapped MFN SAFE) - OpenAI Converge ($1M equity investment) - Startup Wise Guys (up to €65k for equity) - APX (up to €500k, typically €50k for 5%) - Founders Fellowship ($150k for 5–10%) - Seedcamp (€100k–€200k for 7–7.5%) - Antler (€100k for 10% + stipend) - Google for Startups (up to $100k)Accel Atoms (up to $500k–$1M) - AI Grant ($250k uncapped) - AI2 Incubator ($50k–$150k)Afore Capital ($100k–$500k) - Berkeley SkyDeck ($200k) - Soma Capital ($100k) - Founder Institute (equity-based program with undisclosed funding) - Boost VC (up to $500k for 15%) - Antler ($200k–$250k for 8–9%)

BREAKING: Elon Musk’s net worth surges to a record $749 billion after Delaware’s Supreme Court reinstates his 2018 pay package. He is now worth 3 TIMES the second richest person in the world.

If you have applied @ycombinator you should also consider these equity-free grants too 1. @GoogleStartups : $100k in credits 2. @vercel : $3,600 in credits 3. @aforevc Grants $1,000 4. @joinedgecity grants : $5k-40K 5. @emergent_vc : upto 100k 6. @thielfellowship : upto 200K

BREAKING: Elon Musk's xAI announces it has raised $20 billion in a Series E round, exceeding expectations of $15 billion. Nvidia is listed as "strategic investor" to support "buildout of the largest GPU clusters in the world." We are still early.

We are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Google! Google is also making a financial investment in Sakana AI to strengthen this collaboration. This underscores their recognition of our technical depth and our mission to advance AI in Japan. We are combining Google’s world-class products with our agile R&D to tackle complex challenges. By leveraging models like Gemini and Gemma, we will accelerate our breakthroughs in automated scientific discovery. Our work on The AI Scientist and ALE-Agent has already demonstrated the power of these models. Now we are going further. We are scaling our deployment of reliable AI in mission-critical sectors. We are working with financial institutions and government organizations to deliver solutions that meet the highest standards of security and data sovereignty. We are excited to drive the widespread adoption of reliable AI and advance Japan’s AI ecosystem together!

We are joining Cloudflare!

It's time to build.

a16z team shared a bunch of startup ideas for 2026:

JUST IN: Elon Musk says there is "no need" to save money because universal high income is coming

Naval Ravikant: “The future will be almost all startups” “I firmly believe that the efficient size of a company is shrinking very rapidly, and so the future will be almost all startups.” In the clip below from a 2012 interview, Naval speculates that information technology will reverse the centralizing force of economies of scale following the Industrial Revolution. “I think the contract work trend is going to increase, and I think the size of your average company is going to decrease. I think we’re going to see more and more billion dollar businesses built by four or five people, and it’ll stay at that.” He doesn’t think we’ll see many more companies like Facebook or Google with tens of thousands of employees: “I think any entrepreneur worth their salt could today build Facebook with a few hundred people… Facebook and Google are in the situation that large companies end up in where the founders know that 80% of the people are not really needed, they just don’t know which 80%.”

I’m incredibly energized to announce that I’ve joined @generalcatalyst as their Creative Director It’s an honor to be trusted to hold this position by @htaneja, @jcfurstenberg, and the entire GC Famiglia I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with incredible folks across our industry during my break. But the ambition that General Catalyst has to tackle huge problems, is simply unnatural. There’s so much work to do to show the story of the immense world being built here. But I couldn’t imagine doing anything else right now. It would be absolutely foolish to not thank the many people that spent time supporting me during this time. So here’s a list of thank yous: @gaby_goldberg @seanxthielen @menemazarakis @thecpe @tamarawinter @marannelson @pythianism @janehk @cokiehasiotis @jacksondahl @nabeelqu @EmilyHerrera @DevinLewtan @bryce @soleio and I’m sure there’s others I’m forgetting who had a huge impact on me during this time And most importantly, my very offline Wife whom I’m nothing without *bonus first day of work fit yesterday

small life update! i’ve joined Andreessen Horowitz’s @a16z venture scout program! they are essentially letting me manage a little bit of money to write checks into startups. super grateful for the opportunity and excited to begin my angel investing career with the institutional backing of a firm as storied as Andreessen Horowitz (early into facebook, twitter, airbnb, lyft, slack, coinbase and many more) big thank you to @dhaber for the connection and opportunity i’ve had a little success with investing in public equities, I have no idea if any of those skills could translate to the private markets. investing at pre-seed/seed requires a different paradigm as there are no numbers, financials, track-record, and quite frankly there may not even be a product – it really is a bet on the founder and their vision. having said that, if you are building something really cool and raising money, I’d love to hear about it. please email amit@akcomms.com. you can include anything you have whether that is a deck, one pager, etc. i’ve also built out a website that anyone can read to get a sense of how i think of investing in general and the 5 startups I’ve invested in over the past year (one has 20x’ed, one has 10x’ed, the other 3 just finished their seed round last month) no clue if I will be good at this but I appreciate a16z for the opportunity and hopefully we can try to find the next uber or robinhood being built in the early days – excited to see any pitches and please don’t hesitate to reach out! angel investing philosophy below!

Paramount is launching a hostile takeover bid to buy Warner Bros. They are going directly to shareholders with a bid valued at $108.4 billion (Source: https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/paramount-hostile-takeover-bid-warner-bros-discovery-1236603175/…)

Meet the Frontier Builders.

We are incredible excited @compoundvc to launch Compound Reverie Grants today. These are micro-grants for those exploring ideas at the edges, in a world that needs more support for strange and meaningful work. Why Micro Grants? The world needs more out of distribution ideas and people need more space to explore them. Part of being a thesis-driven investment firm operating on long-term time horizons is to apply that same ethos towards helping build the world we want to live in. We find this is rarer than it should be, especially so within the echo chambers of technology and startups. As we've thought about the kind of firm we want to build over the next decade, amongst our excitement, we also kept returning to a sameness we couldn't shake. Tech has grown insular, and respect for different types of thinkers feels improperly distributed. Dollars and belief flow to the most legible people, the ones who fit an overly obvious pattern, who match what a small few have decided success should look like. The less legible get passed over. This reality means we're narrowing the dispersion of what can be built and by who, while increasing the correlation of ideas and aesthetics that get funded or even just supported. To help create a more imaginative future, we've created Compound Reverie Grants. These are micro-grants to fund people exploring ideas that otherwise would not easily get funded through traditional means, but that we think are important for the present and future. They range from as little as $500 to as much as $7,500 each, in fully non-dilutive, no-strings-attached capital. There are moments in life when a small amount of support, intellectual, emotional, and/or fiscal, matters more than anyone appreciates at the time. A month or two of runway. A few hours of debate. The cost of materials for a prototype. Enough breathing room to see if something is real. We hope these grants find people in those moments. Reverie Grants are intentionally broad but there are two specific types of grantees that we know we want to help (and many others that we will learn we want to help that we hope apply). The first are people going deep on something that touches the edges or possible fringes of areas we think about: machine learning, robotics, biology, healthcare, energy, crypto, and the places where those things blur together. These should not be ideas that obviously could be venture-backed companies. You shouldn't be starting a company (though it could lead you to one) but instead you should be working on research, building a prototype, writing, open-sourcing something, or tinkering on a strange project that resists easy explanation. The second are thoughtful people who are simply in transition. Figuring things out. You might not have a thesis-aligned project, but you have a goal, a direction, something you're trying to understand or become and you could use support, a sounding board, a broader network, or a bunch of other things that equate to having people like us in your corner who can help with the complexities of navigating life's idea mazes. We know how hard that can be and we want to meet you and help you. Our hope is that this first wave of grants are only the beginning and as we continue to expand both with other capital that is not just our own, as well as support from others in our sphere who want to be involved, we will get greater clarity and hopefully more scaled impact. More and more we feel we are only creativity constrained and we want to help people who feel that their creativity is limited, under-explored, or not believed in because of its strangeness at a time in which we think the world needs these ideas most. If you're in one of those moments, tell us about it below. If you'd like to refer someone or have any questions, feel free to email grants@compound.vc or DM us on Twitter.

Stoked to announce the @a16z New Media Fellows! Some people have nicknamed this “the Thiel Fellowship for the terminally online.” True to form, there are a lot of names you might recognize from your timeline - like @OfficialLoganK, @swyx, @gaby_goldberg, @signulll, @netcapgirl, & @jxnlco. But it’s not just the timeline masters. We have top-tier creative talents like @SarahChieng, @covacut , @clairevo, @robcgiani, & @thejamesreina. World-class startup operators like @pallipau and @lindsmccallum. And many, many more. Can't wait to get started. More here: https://a16z.substack.com/p/meet-the-a16z-new-media-fellows… Real joy to be building this with @eriktorenberg, @liangsays, @humford, & the new media team.

linktree is a billion-dollar company????? a billion???????? dollars??????????????? for literally... links. in. a. tree.