What AI Startups Will Change Our Life: YC W24 Batch Review
From music and movie generation to voice agents and fighting misinformation!
What a Great Year for (AI) Startups!
Demo Day from Y Combinator has always been a celebration of startups. But this year, it has become an AI celebration: more than half of the W24 cohort are now developing new models or AI products! So we went through them all, selected the most exciting, and now can't wait to discuss them.
Who knows, maybe we will find a new OpenAI? Or, on the contrary, we will conclude all of them are a waste of time. (no, this is for drama; there are a lot of cool companies out there!)
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Why Should We Keep an Eye Out for YC Batches?
Just to clarify, if you want to be the first to know about trends in the startup world, you have to keep an eye on what's going on inside Y Combinator. This incubator has extensive experience with startups. You may know Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, and Twitch among its alumni. And I'm sure YC won't slow down.
According to Garry Tan (President and CEO of YC), the 260 companies in the W24 cohort were selected from over 27,000 applications. The acceptance rate for startups was less than 1%! And AI was the biggest topic, with over 85 companies calling themselves "AI Startups" and over 180 mentioning machine learning in their demos.
I decided to explore the first group—those for which AI is a fundamental element.
Let's get to the bottom of this.
Eggnog | YouTube for AI-Generated Content
Eggnog.ai, founded by Jitesh Maiyuran and Sam Plank, calls itself "YouTube for AI-generated content." Its platform allows you to generate virtual characters, then animate them, and quickly create a full-fledged video. The product was launched just a week ago but is already racking up hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter.
Here's a fun example of what it offers:
Why it matters: If you've been a longtime reader of our newsletter, you know we often discuss virtual avatars, rapid content generation, and automation for creators. Many platforms (which you can read about here) already produce impressive results, but one major limitation is the lack of uniformity.
Creating a character that looked the same in all videos was very time-consuming. Even if you tried hard, it could have different features, face shapes, and other details. With Eggnog, this problem will be solved: digital avatars will become more lifelike and accessible. Isn't that great?
Nuanced | Detect Deepfakes and Misinformation with AI
From creating meme videos to something really serious: fighting misinformation. Nuanced Inc., an Ayman Nadeem and Dylan John Drover startup, promises to defeat "bad AI" (with "good AI"). The founders created a solution that automatically exposes fraud and deepfakes. Nuanced wants to help companies such as advertising platforms, news sites, and marketplaces distinguish human-generated and AI-generated content.
This way, Nuanced wants to keep the creators’ audience's trust. As the company says, no one wants to lose users to fake content and risk their reputation or customer churn.
Why it matters: Since this topic is more serious than the previous one, I'll allow myself to be more skeptical. The idea of Nuanced sounds very nice: fraudsters are modernizing their approaches, and we're getting better at following them. However, as someone who follows tech trends, I see the number and quality of fakes getting increasingly sophisticated.
Will Nuanced's AI keep up with the attackers? I'd say only time will tell.
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Soundry AI | Professional Quality AI Music Creation
In a previous weekly recap, we wrote that 2024 will be the year that AI will infiltrate music and video content production. Soundry.ai by Mark Buckler, Justin Parus, and Diandre Ruiz confirms this prediction.
The startup has created a new platform for musicians and sound artists. This solution enables the creation of songs based on AI samples and the incorporation of generated sound effects into movies and video games. The Soundry system is constantly and gradually learning to guess its users' preferences.
Why it matters: Two words: the democratization of the arts. Okay, it’s a few more. With solutions like Soundry, it will be easier to create our own music without fear of copyright infringement and generate more interesting content for everything from filming for family archives to Hollywood blockbusters.
Infinity AI | Type a Script, Get a Movie
While we're on the subject of art, following Soundry AI, we should discuss Infinity AI. This platform promises to be an indispensable assistant for any creator and scriptwriter. You can simply feed the Infinity model your script describing actions, characters, and dialogs and then get a short video with virtual humans.
The startup was founded by Lina Colucci, Sidney Primas and Andrew Weitz.
Here's a short demo that will give you an understanding of how it works:
Why it matters: Of all the models, services, and platforms I've seen, Infinity AI most closely resembles a one-stop solution for instant content production (if it works as well in the public domain as it does in the demo). And, if you think I'm being overly ambitious about this product, just check out what its creators have to say:
We believe a team of 3 writers - with no actors, directors, or other crew - will win an Academy Award in the next 10 years.
Shepherd | Every Student's Personalized Learning Assistant
Shepherd is an AI service that connects tutors and students. This product, created by Moyo Orekoya, Marcella Imoisili, and Kehinde Williams, offers a learning assistant that schools can provide their students. Shepherd combines AI-driven self-paced learning, tutoring, peer-to-peer collaboration, and analytics for personalized learning.
Why it matters: Do I need to explain why education is important? Let's just admit it: today's education systems are becoming obsolete. Yes, universities are still good for networking and immersing yourself in the exact sciences, but look at the popularity of online courses. People don't want to learn in the old ways anymore. Shepherd may be one of those solutions that will make the process useful and engaging again.
By the way, we just recently had a post about how you can use GPT and other AI Tools to learn almost any skill:
Fluently | AI-Powered Speaking Coach for Calls
Learning with AI is good, but what about learning with AI while working? That's exactly the solution of Fluently, founded by Yurii Rebryk and Stanislav Beliaev. The startup has developed an AI tool that helps non-native professionals improve their English with instant feedback after each Zoom call.
The AI helps improve conversational skills by analyzing information about the user's pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. After each call, Fluently's customer receives recommendations and weaknesses in conversational speech that should be addressed.
Here's a demo video:
Why it matters: According to Fluently, 84 million non-native employees work in English-speaking environments, and companies spend $10B annually on English corporate training to improve communication efficiency across the company. Thus, the startup will kill two birds with one stone: reduce costs for companies and help employees grow and feel more confident.
Marr Labs | Indistinguishable from Humans AI-Voice Agents
Marr Labs, founded by Dave Grannan and Han Shu, is developing voice agents that can replace humans in almost any work scenario. This platform is suitable for answering calls in call centers, scheduling meetings, and selling.
The startup's first product is Vox Scheduling Agent, designed for the home services industry, where every lost call is a missed revenue opportunity.
Here's a demo of their solution:
Why it matters: In the case of Marr Labs, the startup's funders play a crucial role. Dave and Hab previously founded Vlingo, a speech technology company that developed the first Siri app, which was acquired for $225 million. Given their experience, I am ready to believe in the success of Marr Labs and its future projects.
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Vectorview | Building Custom Evaluation Tasks for AI
When I was choosing companies for our review and saw Vectorview, I immediately decided that we should finish the review with this project. No, not because it is less noteworthy than the others. On the contrary, its idea seems so simple, useful, and obvious that it's a wonder we haven't seen a similar solution before.
The startup of Emil Fröberg and Lukas Petersson is developing a system that makes it easy to evaluate the capabilities of basic LLM models and agents. In simple words, Vectorview will allow you, specifically you, to understand how useful a particular AI will be in your tasks.
Why it matters: Most evaluation tests, like MMLU or BBQ, are too general and don't address the specific problems that real users might have. And that increases the number of AI perspectives that fail to pick a truly robust solution. Vectorview, in turn, will be a guide to help us find the solutions we want.
Final Thoughts
New cohorts in YC are a good indicator of current sentiment among investors. As we can see, they are now interested in AI startups with practical products. Some of the projects on our list are focused on enterprises, while others are dedicated to consumer solutions. At the same time, both categories provide pretty clear answers to the target audience's requests, lowering the entry threshold into one or the other area.
Well, let's wish these startups good luck and keep an eye on their results!
Speaking of which, if talking about YC has given you the urge to create your own startup, we have tools for you. Just follow this newsletter:
What do you think about YC W24? Tell us in the comments!
This article was first published in the Creators AI newsletter. View the original edition.
