Industrial Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

Madrone builds cooling systems for data centers. In Texas, where most new sites are, Madrone can cool using 30% less power and water, thanks to novel dew-point cooling technology.

We are an AI-native broker, solving sourcing of machines and intermediate goods. We take over finding suppliers and getting the best quotes for our customers (based on price, quality, lead time, etc.). Our customers have limited resources for procurement and we help them reduce purchase prices by 30% on average.

Fortune 500 companies and the fastest-growing manufacturing firms use Arzana’s AI platform to automate order entry, quoting, and customer updates. So teams can scale faster, respond sooner, and grow without adding overhead.

Fuchsia handles hardware certification and testing so great products can get to markets faster. AI agents keep our work accurate, timely, and fully traceable for every stakeholder.

Tensr is building fully autonomous robotic factories that make scaling hardware as effortless as scaling on AWS. We’re a group of Berkeley graduate robotics researchers who previously won a full scale autonomous IndyCar competition at 160mph.

Forge Robotics is changing the way that metal parts are fabricated. We are enabling a future where our intelligent robotic system completes all steps needed to take raw metal stock and transform it into fully welded parts. Beginning with welding, we are building a robot-mounted vision system and AI feature detection that creates a real-time 3D map and tells the arm exactly where to go at every instant.

Our agents run hardware engineering tasks that normally take hours or days in just a few minutes, allowing engineers to process 100x more data and information. Our platform allows hardware engineers to orchestrate agents for tasks such as analyzing failures across entire test campaigns, pulling the right data and KPIs from their databases, checking how conditions (like temperature or load) affect performance and reliability, and then document findings in reports and dashboards.

Infrastructure projects like data centers, factories, and energy facilities require navigating hundreds of permits and regulatory approvals before construction can begin. Today this process is handled through consultants, spreadsheets, and thousands of pages of documentation, adding years to project timelines and millions in consulting costs. We are building an AI autopilot to automate infrastructure permitting and regulatory compliance. Our goal is to significantly reduce the time and cost required to get infrastructure projects approved and built.

Testing and certifying the hardware of the future

GD&T takes years to master. Engineers must encode their design intent into a dense syntax that manufacturers must decode, and not everyone gets it right. Put ten engineers in front of the same drawing and you may get ten different interpretations. Which means errors often surface later in interface stack-ups, manufacturing, or in the field - when they’re far more expensive to fix. That’s why we built F4 - the platform that analyzes GD&T to determine whether your designs are ready for production. Drop in your drawing and 3D file. F4 analyzes every element of your GD&T to assess whether your design is clear, manufacturable, and production ready. To make the drawing easier to understand, engineers can visualize their datums, reference frames, and tolerance zones directly on the 3D model. F4 also calculates tolerance stack-ups instantly - directly from the drawing. What once took hours of manual work now takes seconds. When issues are found, F4 flags them and guides engineers toward resolving the problem. After analyzing your drawing, F4 also automatically generates design and inspection reports - stack-up tables, FAI reports - ready to share with your team. And it does all of this locally on-device with no AI used for analysis. Producing deterministic results engineers can trust.

Rebulk accurately measures and monitors bulk inventory like piles of feed, sand, and other assets that do not fit into boxes and barcodes using cameras, LiDAR, and computer vision. Most bulk inventory is still managed with rough estimates, manual checks, delayed updates, and too much guesswork. Because it lives in piles, bays, yards, and truck beds instead of boxes with barcodes, it is much harder to track accurately. When teams do not know what is actually on site, it leads to shrink, stockouts, bad planning, and unnecessary fire drills. We’ve lived this problem, and we know how to solve it. Warren saw it firsthand as a Product Manager at Milk Moovement, a $20M Series A AgTech startup, working closely with feed suppliers and farm managers. Cole was engineer #3 at Tropic, scaling it from seed to Series B, and later led engineering at an AI startup. We’ve built an integrated hardware and software platform and is working with one of the largest agricultural company in North America and Charm Industrial. As industries demand real-time visibility into the physical world, RebuIk is positioned to become the operating system for bulk assets from inventory tracking to procurement and logistics.

Cascade Space is building a turn-key communications system for lunar and deep space missions. Our ground station network and integrated software tools work together to maximize uptime and availability, while reducing spacecraft iteration cycles from weeks to hours.

For the first time in decades, fast, flexible domestic production can be economically superior. We’re rebuilding America’s productive edge through low-volume, high-mix manufacturing, helping hard-tech teams prototype faster, launch sooner, and build more here. If you want to restore American productive power and ship real hardware, reach out. jakob@foundation-industries.com

SalesPatriot is a back-office operating system for distributors and OEMS. We build custom AI workflows for sales and supply chain teams to manage procurement, requests for quote and purchase orders. In large orgs that operate as key nodes of the supply chain data is scattered across twelve systems. Quotes get lost and Executives lack visibility. Supply chain workflows are time consuming because data isn't where it needs to be in the format it needs to be. Employees are stuck between their email, ERP, CRM, marketplaces, and spreadsheets instead of winning business and protecting margin.

Forge Automation runs software enabled factories that deliver custom metal parts in four days or less. Instead of mechanical engineers having to wait two to three weeks for their low volume CNC parts, they can simply upload a CAD model on our platform and we will ship it out in four days or less. We aim to give mechanical engineers the "Amazon experience" for custom metal parts.

Plume is an AI-powered geospatial platform for site selection in energy infrastructure projects. Selecting the right sites requires analysis of +50 geospatial, grid, and regulatory constraints across fragmented data sources. Plume changes the process by enabling users to interact with geospatial data using natural language.

Ultra builds practical, general-purpose robots that are deploying—and producing ROI—today. Unlike traditional industrial automation that’s rigid and complex, our robots are zero integration (able to be installed in hours, not weeks) and are highly flexible, capable of quickly learning new tasks and delivering immediate value to customers. Founded by a team of three-time entrepreneurs with a decade of collaboration, Ultra moves fast. We already have robots in the field generating revenue and data, with plans to rapidly scale deployments this year.

Poka Labs builds an AI platform to help sales reps at chemical manufacturers respond to requests from customers and win more business. Our agents understand each companies product catalog, customer purchase behaviors, and tribal knowledge in order to price, quote, and win the business. Malay and Andrew met while pursuing at Harvard Business School and now are building for companies ranging from a few million in sales per year to billions.

Pivot Robotics makes AI software for robotic arms that helps manufacturers automate their most labor intensive tasks. We are starting out with the dangerous task of metal grinding and are currently deploying our software on 10+ robots in a cast-iron foundry.

RMFG builds and operates advanced, software-defined factories, manufacturing precision parts and metal assemblies for fast-moving hardware teams. Our vertically integrated software platform automates quoting, DFM, scheduling, and machine control, and allows us to ship faster and at lower cost than traditional shops.  We build our own computer vision models, AI agents, and custom software to solve problems inside our manufacturing facility. Today we primarily build complex metal assemblies using sheet, tube and CNC milled parts. We plan to continually moving upstream, offering more complex manufacturing services including electro-mechanical assembly. We’ve delivered critical parts for companies building custom robots, autonomous farms, PCB factories, weather modification technology, rockets, and more. 

Solugen is decarbonizing the chemistry of everyday life with enzymes and innovative metal catalysts. Our new to the world Bioforge platform technology can produce high value chemical goods that are biobased and carbon negative, at cost on par with current technologies. We are making sustainable chemistry accessible to all living things, to ensure a prosperous world exists for generations.