At Y Combinator’s Spring 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, nearly every presenting startup had something to do with AI — they’re either developing AI agents or creating tools to facilitate their development.
Indeed, several founders seem to be taking a page out of the playbook of several successful AI startups: About half a dozen startups were presenting variations of “Cursor for X.” For example, Den is building a “Cursor for knowledge workers,” and Vesence is on its way to make a “Cursor for lawyers.”
It wasn’t all only about AI, though. We noticed several startups are working on robotics, which seems to be having a bit of a revival at the moment.
Below are some of the startups that caught both investors’ and our attention.
Anvil
What it does: SEO for LLMs
Why it’s a fave: How people search for content is changing, with folks using various AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to find content. Understandably, brands need to find a way to increase their visibility on these platforms. Anvil claims it helps brands measure, optimize, and increase their presence on these AI tools.
Atum Works
What it does: Builds 3D chips
Why it’s a fave: Transistors aren’t getting smaller as fast as they used to, so Atum’s founders propose the best new way to put more transistors on a chip, and therefore increase processing power, is to stack them in three dimensions. Investors told me that Atum’s vision is so revolutionary that the company has a chance to become the next Nvidia.
Auctor
What it does: Automates enterprise software implementation
Why it’s a fave: The startup says prominent software vendors like SAP, ServiceNow, AWS, and Box have already reached out to use Auctor’s solution themselves and potentially for help with integrating software at customer sites.
Cactus
What it does: AI copilot for solopreneurs
Why it’s a fave: Cactus says people who run businesses all by themselves are often too busy to pursue new opportunities. The startup claims its AI bot can take off some of the load by answering calls and accepting payments on your behalf.
Den
What it does: Cursor for enterprise knowledge workers
Why it’s a fave: Investors told me this is one of the hottest companies in the batch. Den promises its AI agents can replace Slack and Notion, enabling a company’s employees to interact and share information with software tailored to each enterprise’s specific needs.
Eloquent AI
What it does: Automates customer operations with AI
Why it’s a fave: Eloquent says its AI bots can help customers of financial services companies do things like automatically unfreeze bank accounts or add drivers to car insurance policies. In other words, Eloquent promises an end to long waits for human customer service. The startup claims financial companies can deploy its AI near instantly without needing to involve internal engineering teams. Eloquent has already raised “a large seed round,” Tugce Bulut, the startup’s co-founder and CEO said on the TBPN podcast.
LLM Data Company
What it does: Tooling for evaluation and reinforcement learning
Why it’s a fave: Evaluating all the new AI tools for quality is snowballing into a big, difficult problem. LLM Data Company says it can help with its own LLMs that can evaluate the quality of an AI agent, and it’s already working with customers, including Perplexity.
Scalar Field
What it does: AI-powered Bloomberg terminal
Why it’s a fave: “Terminals are dashboards and not thinking tools,” says Amandeep Singh, co-founder of Scalar Field. While the startup’s AI agents won’t “think” for you, it claims they can manipulate financial data with more flexibility than existing financial tools.
Sim Studios
What it does: The open-source AI agent builder
Why it’s a fave: Sim Studios wants to do for AI agents what Figma did for design: make them incredibly easy to build. Sim Studios users, including customers Epiq, Mercore, and the U.S. Department of Defense, have built AI agents for critical functions such as data transformations, real-world event simulations, and deep research.
Sygaldry
What it does: Quantum accelerated AI servers to speed up AI training and inference
Why it’s a fave: While a fully functioning quantum computer may still be years away, the industry has been making progress. What caught my eye about Sygaldry is that its co-founder and CEO is Chad Rigetti, who founded and took his company public via a SPAC in 2021.
Vybe
What it does: Vibe coding to build applications
Why it’s a fave: Investors who saw a demo of Vybe building apps told me that it can create all sorts of cool tools. One person I talked to even called it a “clear winner” of the batch.