Y Combinator is going all-in on AI agents, making up nearly 50% of the latest batch. Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch saw a significant focus on AI agent companies. Out of 144 startups in the batch, 67, or 46%, were identified as AI agent companies. As of this writing, I am personally excited about the coming era of AI agents for every aspect of business and our personal lives, spending a lot of my reflection time contemplating what life will look like once these become ubiquitous and integrated into every aspect of our lives. I genuinely see the next generation growing up with AI agents woven into every aspect of life, and they would not be able to imagine life before or without them. This is definitely a major paradigm shift. YC, with its batch model, can invest in a broad base of the most promising startup teams all at once, betting that a few will wind up being the winners who have breakout success and go on to be the next Google or Amazon of the coming generation of tech giants.

Venture Debt appears to be back in a big way. With many mature venture-backed startups having raised at high valuations in 2020-2022, they would now likely have lower valuations should they seek to raise another round of VC funding. Some firms are now offering non-dilutive structures to these companies as an alternative to a down round.

Microsoft has announced its commitment to supporting Google’s newly introduced open protocol, known as Agent2Agent (A2A), which facilitates communication among AI "agents."