Podcasts Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2026

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.

Wondercraft introduces vibe creation, creating video through natural conversation.

Evolve builds consumer apps used by millions. We're a YC W18 company with two products. Rest (getrest.app) is an AI sleep coach for people tired of bad nights, whether that's lying awake for hours or waking up at 3am. It's built on the principles of CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia), the method sleep clinicians recommend first, and turns them into a daily program with a coach you can talk to at any hour. No appointments, no waitlists. People use it to sleep well again without leaning on melatonin, sleep aids, or 2am doom-scrolling. Users often go from years of broken sleep to sleeping through the night in weeks. We build Rest with sleep scientists and behavior-design experts. Podcast App is one of the largest independent podcast players: a minimalist app with tens of millions of downloads that uses machine learning to build playlists around what you like. Our team has built consumer products with 100M+ installs, and our work has been featured by Apple, TechCrunch, Yahoo, Fast Company, and Fox. Get in touch: hello@getrest.app.

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.