What's different about Y Combinator's latest batch?
Mar 13, 2025
Kaley Ubellacker
Market Stirrings 🚩
Here's what the week looked like in pre-seed:
$13.2M
7
Data aggregated from proprietary research and Crunchbase; valuation estimate based on 10-20% ownership stake.
What's happening at Necessary Ventures:
Plural Energy is proving that crypto can be compliant by acquiring a broker-dealer and expanding securitization capabilities, putting it on track to tokenize over $100 million in clean energy assets by the end of 2025.
Recently on Money Moves, Danielle Strachman, cofounder of the 1517 Fund and key player in building the Thiel Fellowship program, revealed her game-changing approach to investing in dropouts, students, and sci-fi science.
GEARING UP FOR A HOT PRE-SEED SUMMER?
Reporting on pre-seed funding can be challenging due to inherent data lags, but one thing is clear when comparing February 2024 to February 2025: round sizes are looking bigger than McGregor before fight night. Despite the data lag, the total amount raised in individual rounds over $2.5M has increased by more than 70% year-over-year.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
Google cofounder Larry Page has officially hopped on the AI startup train with his new venture, Dynatomics.
In Y Combinator’s latest batch, a quarter of the founders are relying on "vibe coding," using AI-generated code for up to 95% of their codebases.
President Trump hosted the first-ever Crypto Summit, bringing together key government officials and major crypto executives to discuss the future of regulation and legislation.
For the less rushed reader …
Turning a new Page
A new bandwagon member just dropped. Google cofounder Larry Page has officially hopped on the AI startup train with his new venture, Dynatomics, though the details are more elusive than the source code for a viral TikTok. Apparently, the startup will focus on using AI for "highly optimized" product manufacturing—whatever that means. AI startups continue to bring in VC cash, accounting for nearly half of all funding in Q2 2024. However, while AI is touted as the next big thing, investors are starting to feel the heat as companies like GitLab, once the poster child for AI-powered DevSecOps, are facing class action lawsuits for overstating their AI capabilities. At least if Larry runs into any roadblocks, he can always Google it.
Built like a machine
Manual coding is so retro. In Y Combinator’s latest batch, a quarter of the founders are relying on "vibe coding," using AI-generated code for up to 95% of their codebases. While these founders are still fully capable of coding by hand, AI is helping them speed up development. YC partners like Garry Tan and Diana Hu stress that while AI is a powerful tool, founders still need the “taste” to distinguish between gold and garbage. With AI startups like Bolt.new and Codeium raising hundreds of millions, companies will need to master debugging to avoid scaling headaches as their products grow. If not, they might find themselves in a coding disaster, and that’s so not the vibe.
Not another coin flip
Crypto’s network is expanding. President Trump hosted the first-ever Crypto Summit, bringing together key government officials and major crypto executives to discuss the future of regulation and legislation. The summit signaled a shift in Washington’s approach to the industry, with figures like Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov highlighting a newfound wave of support. Trump pushed for legislation on stablecoins and digital assets before Congress’ summer recess, and the summit also saw discussions on establishing a federal Bitcoin reserve. Trump’s Executive Order focuses on auditing the government’s existing crypto holdings rather than acquiring new Bitcoin, aiming to streamline the nation’s crypto strategy. While concerns over conflicts of interest have surfaced due to crypto executives’ ties to Trump, it’s something to keep in mine as venture capital interest in crypto continues to surge.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Highlights from this week’s pre-seed raises:
climatetech
Orpheus Ocean - A startup going sea-riously far.
Orpheus Ocean raised $2.8 million led by Propeller. Orpheus Ocean is developing autonomous deep-sea vehicles to enable fast, scalable, and affordable data collection in remote underwater environments.
e-commerce
Platter - Helping brands dish it and take it.
Platter raised $1.6 million led by Animal Capital. Platter is building an ecommerce platform that helps Shopify brands optimize their storefronts and boost profitability.
AI
Copley - Making content that clicks.
Copley raised $4.8 million led by Asymmetric Capital Partners. Copley is creating an AI-powered platform that streamlines content creation, testing, and deployment across multiple channels like web, ads, and SMS.
AI
dScribe AI - Flipping the script.
dScribe AI raised $1.2 million from Abstraction Capital, EquipmentShare, Flyover Capital, KCRise Fund, and Redbud VC. dScribe AI is creating a platform that converts video and multimedia content into actionable insights, helping companies unlock greater value from video data.
Outro🚪
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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
