Media Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Martini is a collaborative, AI-native platform for professional filmmaking in the era of generative media. By integrating the best generative models into professional workflows, we enable world-class creatives to harness generative AI as a legitimate medium for film.

Cardboard is an agentic video editor for growth/marketing teams and serious creators who need to ship videos consistently. Instead of agencies, long timelines, and infinite review cycles, teams give cardboard a footage + a goal (“3 variants”, “30s hook”, “testimonials”) to get a strong first cut in minutes on which they can iterate quickly. Multimodal LLMs can finally reason over footage, and WebGPU/WebCodecs make a real NLE possible in the browser. For the first time, an “AI director” inside a professional editor can be a reality. We have to build two hard things at once: a high-performance editor in the browser and an agentic editor that is reliable for production use cases. Most startups do one; incumbents can’t rebuild their stack without breaking everything. Saksham and Ishan met in school and have known each other since 15 years. Saksham was Co-founder/CTO of Iterate AI (backed by EF) and posts content on social media; Ishan has spent ~5yr building memory-heavy, performance-critical browser apps at HackerRank (S11) and deeply understands browsers. He has built Hotspoter (5M+ downloads) when he was 14. Together, we’re unusually suited to build the editor core others avoid. Video is becoming the default distribution channel, and the team that iterates fastest compounds attention. Cardboard becomes the default workspace for video production, the way Canva/Figma became the workspace for design - because it’s collaborative, fast, and does the tedious parts for you.

With our visual understanding engine & platform, Aspect processes dense multimodal datasets, providing tools for segmentation, QC, structured schema extraction. Companies today have access to Glean and Notion Agents for working with vast text corpuses - Aspect is enabling that for multimodal data.

The platform where frontier research labs buy data for world models.

Absurd makes AI brand and performance ads at scale. Our last video for Kalshi ("Election Day") did 1M+ views, and our videos average 400K+ organic views. Companies like Replit, Brex, Whop, Reforge, and Micro1 use Absurd to create production-quality videos in 72 hours. We do it with a multi-agent orchestration layer, working closely with your team from concept to final cut. Try it at absurd.com We're hiring: absurd.com/careers

Koyal is an Agentic AI Filmmaking Platform that allows you to seamlessly convert script or audio into personalized, visually compelling stories. We’re a team from Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Meta, with experience in AI video generation. https://koyal.ai builds directly upon our published research at the AI conference NeurIPS in December. We’ve been covered in the international press for our patented secure personalization protocol CHARCHA: the genAI captcha. Announcement: https://x.com/meh_agarwal/status/1965866965425348687 Demo: https://x.com/meh_agarwal/status/1965137062119752099 We currently have paid pilots with the biggest global music labels, podcasts and production houses, and just launched our public beta at beta.koyal.ai We recently concluded a pilot with Universal Music and T-Series (world’s largest music label) alongside Bollywood production houses like Maddock Entertainment, and Collective Artists Network! As part of that, we launched 5 music videos for Grammy and Oscar winning artists like A R Rahman, Ricky Kej and Shankar Mahadevan all crossing 1.5 million views! We've recently built SOTA capabilities in (i) multilingual script to audio to video, (ii) Agentic lip-sync with dynamic movement & (iii) Multi-character consistency.

Interface is a frontier research lab focused on high-fidelity human simulation. We build systems that model human appearance, behavior, and interaction for world-model research.

Diffusion Studio Pro is a browser based non-linear editor (NLE) that uses WebCodecs and WebGPU to deliver smooth, pro level performance. It brings the modern UX of tools like Figma and Framer to video editing, making it easy for anyone to create professional content.

We're building a protocol for large language models to directly interface with image sensors.

Capitol builds intelligence infrastructure for companies overwhelmed by data but starved for clarity. Today, 80% of enterprise AI projects fail because outputs aren't accurate, attributable, or usable. Capitol AI works with companies in high-stakes industries to turn information into intelligence that drives decisions with model-agnostic, purpose-built infrastructure. Capitol is building a different future - one where institutions, creators, and analysts stay in control of their knowledge, their IP, and their value. We deliver a model-agnostic platform that turns complexity into decision-grade insight. We don't believe the future should be dictated by a handful of closed models. We enforce attribution, minimize hallucinations, and preserve temporal accuracy - giving companies trusted answers they can act on.

Overlap builds multimodal AI agents that can do literally anything you want related to video, such as finding specific moments, generating clips, or analyzing your video library. What takes media companies thousands of hours, we do in seconds.

ComfyUI is the most popular open-source framework to build media generation workflows. However, it's a single-player experience that needs to run on a local GPU. Everyone has different environments and sharing workflows to someone else can take days to get setup. Comfy Deploy fixes this by creating a collaborative workspace, where a teams environemnt, models and workflows can be shared as easily with a link. **Team ComfyUI workspace** • Replacing cobbled-together solutions with a unified, team-focused environment. When it works for you, you can be sure it works for your team. • Eliminate "works on my machine" issues with version control. • Share storage for models and outputs. • Leverage the power of ComfyUI without the complexities of self-hosting **Powerful GPU Infrastructure** • Access managed GPUs that grow with your teams needs • Tailor the platform to your requirements by easily installing custom nodes and models **Custom configuration** • Download the models you want, stored privately in your personal volume • Install the custom nodes your workflow needs • Train models on your own datasets. **API Deployments: From workflow to production in seconds** • Transform any workflow into a fully functional API immediately without extra engineering • Comprehensive observability on every run • Built-in API authentication • TS/JS/Python/Ruby SDKs for seamless integration

Magic Hour is a professional video creation tool. It takes the best AI video models, puts them in one workflow, and makes creating an amazing video as easy as selecting a template and customizing it. You can use the product at https://magichour.ai

Kite is a screen recorder that makes your demo videos look like Apple commercials in minutes. Simply record your app (works for iPhone recordings too!). Kite will track your cursor and keyboard inputs, so it can automatically zoom in on the action with professional 3D animations. Kite is as easy as Canva, but your videos will look like they came out of OpenAI or Figma. - One-click cinematic 3D animations - Display recordings on 3D mockup devices (MacBooks, iPhones etc) - Combine unlimited recordings into one video - Edit, adjust speed and trim recordings - Add text scenes and text annotations alongside recordings - AI voiceovers using state of the art text to speech models - Free music library - Brand kit–upload your logos, colors and fonts - Start from our template library or start from scratch Kite is used by hundreds of YC companies for launch videos, social media posts, landing page demos, changelog updates, feature releases and more.

SuperCraft is a generative AI software for teams building physical products We help businesses securely use generative AI capabilities across their design departments for faster design exploration and visualization of physical products Fortune 500 companies are using SuperCraft to create new product designs, and visualize how their product will look like in a real scenario, before actually building it, and treat the design boards as a shared source of truth that all teams involved can collaborate and provide feedback on - resulting in faster design reviews, more creative exploration, and faster time to market.

Storyboarder is a tool and a platform for anyone to create, share, and sell webcomics. In East Asia, the webcomic (or digital manga) industry is an $12B market and rapidly growing to the rest of the world. Webtoon, the largest company in the space, generates $100M / month in revenue. However, their addressable market is limited by their content creators, who need know how to draw. Readers are desperate for a greater variety of stories in webcomics. Through years of working with filmmakers, we’ve built extremely easy to use storyboarding software that has 700K users. We’re democratizing visual storytelling to everyone. We’re working on the next generation that, through advances in video game interfaces, ubiquitous 3D compute, and AI, will allow anyone to easily create scenes, pose characters, to create webcomics. Storyboarder is backed by Y Combinator (W23), David Karp (Tumblr Founder), Andrew Kortina (Venmo Founder), and other product focused investors.

Shortbread app is Netflix for romance comics built by a team of women writers, artists and engineers. We work with bestselling authors on Kindle and #BookTok to turn their romance fictions into comics. Our content specialize in viral romance fiction tropes such as mafia and dark romance. The comics are free to read with options to buy a subscription.

The one stop shop for surfers. Boardcave provides surfers with online surf knowledge and gear to accelerate their surfing. The company is reimagining how surfers progress and partake in ocean activities.

Litnerd is a kids reading + writing club app that grew by 14x this past school year. Think of us as a modern-day Scholastic, with a heavy IP play. We create original IP with our community + partner brands -> turn them into books, media and learning curriculum, layered with an AI personalized tutor to help kids learn to read and write in a personalized and engaging way. Our product format is a Social and Gamified - with a live weekly community meetup and monthly e-tournaments. - And it works! Litnerd 4x improved the pass rate of students on their annual state Reading (ELA) exam. - STICKY: Kids spend 10-20 minutes on the Litnerd app OUTSIDE of classroom time. - KID AUTHORS: Kids are the authors of the books and Litnerd AI helps illustrate + publish the book. - Built on the Science of Reading - Original IP: all books, media and courseware is original content created and published by Litnerd.

True3D is building the next generation of video. Our AI foundation models bring real-world depth to every frame, making 3D creation and streaming instant and universal.

Demand Curve is your startup's growth operating system, the lowest risk, fastest path to getting traction and growing your company. 🚀 Growth Program: A membership/course designed for startup operators who want to learn and execute growth without hiring a full team yet. Powered by our premium content library, expert guidance, and AI growth co-pilot, it's a step-by-step guide to building a growth engine that actually works. Trusted by 3,000+ startups (including over 500 YC companies). 📰 Newsletter: We also publish the Growth Newsletter, reaching 100,000+ founders and marketers every week with strategic and tactical growth advice. It's one of the most-read startup growth newsletters with 46-50% open rates. 🦄 Agency: For companies ready to scale, our agency team provides full-service execution across growth strategy, paid acquisition, and funnel optimization. We've helped scale Microsoft, Framer, Pilot, Ancestry, and hundreds of other companies and YC startups. 💸 Newsletter sponsorships: Get your brand in front of 100,000+ engaged founders and growth operators. Learn more at demandcurve.com

Plotdrive is the first continuous production system for narrative — infrastructure that transforms how long-form stories move from imagination to completion. Most books don’t fail for lack of talent; they fail when the workflow collapses somewhere between page 80 and page 300. Founded by brothers with backgrounds in high-stakes poker, VR, and narrative systems, we built what we couldn’t find: an engine that holds the entire shape of a story while authors work inside it. Writers see 5-10× gains in throughput without losing their voice. Manuscripts that sat untouched for years finally reach the finish line. Authors are using Plotdrive to break decade-long blocks. Publishers are using it to rethink how story pipelines should operate when continuity, context, and editorial craft can finally scale. The printing press made distribution industrial. We’re making completion industrial — creating the foundational layer for how narrative gets made at scale.

Joy is a software platform with a mission to help the world celebrate better together. Our software helps everyone plan and remember all of life's events. Big or small, Joy is there every step of the way.

A publishing platform designed to work the same way your brain does.

Audm is a mobile app that turns long-form print journalism into professionally narrated digital audio. The app, which was quietly launched on 2016, uses professional voice actors to read news content that makes it enjoyable to listen to.

Breaker is a podcast listening and discovery application. Most podcasts are free, but serious publishers are spending big budgets to make high quality audio content like Serial, which hit 100 million downloads and made podcasts mainstream. 67 million Americans are already listening to podcasts a month. Breaker wants to sign exclusive deals to distribute the best premium podcasts and charge users $6 per month. First, its goal is to build a huge listener audience by making the best podcast consumption app. It launched today, and will offer podcasters ways to connect and get feedback from their community, and analytics about what content performs best. It has a stunning 67% retention rate after a month for beta users. If it can convince people to pay for what’s often free, it could become the preferred place for podcasters to talk.

The Athletic is a direct-to-consumer digital sports media company committed to helping subscribers experience storytelling in a whole new way. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco, The Athletic has over 600 full-time employees and covers more than 250 professional sports and collegiate teams in the US, Canada and the UK. The Athletic’s newsroom has produced thousands of in-depth articles along with more than 120 podcasts and premium video content. The Athletic is a remote-friendly company as we have offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and Melbourne.

Blitz Esports is a tech and media startup focused on bridging the gap between esports fandom and personal gameplay. We're one of the premier media publications in esports, specializing in educational video content for League of Legends, CS:GO and Overwatch. We've also developed the first fully automatic League of Legends coaching app, which uses computer vision and data-driven insights to proactively help gamers make better decisions at each step of their gameplay experience. A month into open beta, the Blitz app is now used in over a million games each week.

Tech in Asia (YC W15) is the largest English-language technology media company that focuses on Asia. From the latest news to the hottest trends and the boldest startups to the strongest titans, we cover everything tech in the region. Our goal is to build and serve Asia’s tech and startup community.

Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations. Community members can submit, browse, vote and comment on daily submissions of products and collections of products. They also get the opportunity to interact directly with product creators, investors, journalists, as well as, an active community of people who are passionate about products.

Media companies, brands and celebrities used Vidpresso to create the best quality live videos, typically for Facebook Live and Twitter. Vidpresso was acquired in 2018 by Facebook.

Omnisio was founded in 2007 by Ryan Junee, Simon Ratner and Julian Frumar, and was subsquently acquired by YouTube in July 2008. Omnisio enabled users to annotate and share videos from any website, and enabled markup of the structure within a video. On May 13, 2008, Omnisio launched a slide-syncing tool using SlideShare for slides and a host of video services.

Slinkset is a white label social news platform that allows anyone to start a social news site and integrate it into their own website.

140Fire is the fastest growing online video ad network. Brands and agencies utilize 140Fire for it's suite of engagement and data tools which make media buying 10x more effective when it comes to running video ads. Backed by Y Combinator, Mark Cuban, Jonathan Kraft and Skip Paul, 140Fire is based in Santa Monica and has 15 employees.