Latest news with #YC
Hans India
15-05-2025
- General
- Hans India
MLA attends installation of Peddamma idol
Hanamkonda: wardhannapet MLA KR Nagaraju on Wednesday attended as chief guest at the installation ceremony of the Peddamma Thalli idol, organized by the Mudiraj community in Thimmapur village of 43rd division of the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation. He performed special prayers. Later he participated in the idol installation ceremony of Sri Potharaju Swamy and performed Abhishekam. The priests then blessed the MLA . He expressed gratitude to the donors of the idol, Gampala Neelamma and Balayya, and to those who supported the temple construction. Corporators Aruna Victor, Jalgam Anita, Ranjith Rao, mandal president Vaddepalli Prakash, division president Chinta Prakash, Warangal district YC vice-president Chevvu Sivarama Krishna, members of the Mudiraj community, Congress leaders, activists and devotees attended.
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Y Combinator to court: Google's search empire is a 'monopoly by cheque book, not ...'
Startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC) has labeled Google a " monopolist " that has "stunted" the US startup ecosystem in an amicus brief filed May 9 in the government's ongoing antitrust case against the search giant. YC charged that Google has "chilled independent firms like YC from funding and accelerating innovative startups that could otherwise have challenged Google's dominance," creating what it calls a "kill zone" that deters venture capital investment in potential Google competitors. "The result is a landscape that has been artificially stunted and stagnant," YC wrote in its filing. YC proposes remedies, not immediate breakup of Google Despite the harsh criticism, YC CEO Garry Tan clarified that the organization isn't calling for Google's immediate dismantling. "We love Google and what it represents as a paragon of US-led tech and innovation . We also want to make sure the excesses of big tech make way for tomorrow's little tech," Tan wrote on social media following the brief's submission. YC proposes several remedies, including ending Google's practice of paying billions to be the default search engine on devices like iPhones and opening Google's search index for competitors to train large language models. "We are not calling for a breakup of Google," Tan emphasized. "If anything we hope that a measured and thoughtful remedy between USG and Google from here (5 year term!) means a court-supervised spin-off is contingent, and a last resort." Google's has created distribution barriers YC argues Google's dominance creates nearly insurmountable barriers for startups entering the search market. "Google's 90% search dominion is a ladder-pull for startups. Exclusive default contracts commandeer >50% of search routes, Chrome grabs another 20%. That's 70% of distribution sealed off before a startup even ships v1," Tan wrote, calling it "Monopoly by checkbook [cheque book], not merit." The brief comes at a critical time as the government considers potential remedies after Google lost its antitrust case last year. Proposed penalties could include requiring Google to divest parts of its business if it doesn't implement changes within five years. "VC investment in a sector drops about 40% after a big tech consolidation/acquisition," Tan noted. "Founders aren't asking for a handout or a leg up. They want a level playing field, which we don't have." YC's stance may surprise some given its recent partnerships with Google, including access to dedicated GPU clusters for YC startups and Google's acquisitions of YC-backed companies Flutter and Fridge. "We want Google to succeed and we also want the next Google to succeed," Tan concluded.
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Google a 'monopolist', says Y Combinator in court brief
Y Combinator has accused Google of stifling US startup innovation by monopolising search and online advertising. In a legal filing, it claimed Google's dominance deters investment in potential rivals. YC proposed curbing exclusive deals and opening Google's search index, amid ongoing antitrust proceedings over Google's anti-competitive practices and market control. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Startup accelerator and venture capital firm Y Combinator has accused Google of harming the US startup ecosystem by making it harder for new companies to compete. In a filing in an ongoing antitrust case (United States v. Google LLC), YC called Google a 'monopolist' that has 'stunted' innovation by shutting out potential challengers.'Google has chilled independent firms like YC from funding and accelerating innovative startups that could otherwise have challenged Google's dominance,' the brief stated. 'The result is a landscape that has been artificially stunted and stagnant.'YC argued that Google's dominance in search and online advertising has created a 'kill zone' that discourages investment in web search and AI startups. It pointed to the company's multibillion-dollar payments to be the default search engine on devices like the iPhone as anti-competitive.'Google has effectively frozen the web-search and text-advertising markets for over a decade,' YC firm said it is now focused on supporting startups building question-based and agentic AI tools that could change how people access information online. But it warned that there is a 'clear risk' that Google will use its powerful market position to block the growth of such of pushing for a breakup, YC proposed remedies such as curbing Google's exclusive deals and opening its search index to help train large-language models, steps it believes would give startups a fairer shot at competing. Google is facing a major antitrust showdown as US regulators push for sweeping penalties after a federal judge ruled the company illegally maintained a monopoly in online case, brought by the Department of Justice in 2020, argues that Google used multibillion-dollar deals with Apple and other tech firms to shut out rivals and entrench its dominance. A ruling last year found the company had violated antitrust hearings, known as 'remedy proceedings,' will determine potential penalties. The Justice Department is seeking measures that could force Google to share search data with competitors, ban exclusive distribution deals, and possibly spin off parts of its business, including the Chrome argues the proposals are excessive and unrelated to the court's findings, warning they could harm consumers and undermine privacy and security.
Forbes
29-04-2025
- Forbes
Vibe Coding: AI's Transformation Of Software Development
Vibe Coding: AI's Transformation Of Software Development In the rapidly evolving landscape of software development, one month can be enough to create a trend that makes big waves. In fact, only two months ago, Andrej Karpathy, a former head of AI at Tesla and an ex-researcher at OpenAI, defined 'vibe coding' in a social media post. This approach to software development uses large language models (LLMs) to prioritize the developer's vision and user experience, moving away from conventional coding practices. The code no longer matters. Vibe coding is less about writing code in the conventional sense and more about making the right requests to generative AI (aka a Forrester coding TuringBot) to produce the desired outcome based on the developer's 'vibe' or intuition about how the application should look, feel, and behave. As cited in a YouTube video from Y Combinator (YC) titled 'Vibe coding is the future,' a quarter of startups in YC's current cohort have codebases that are almost entirely AI-generated (85% or more). The essence of vibe coding lies in its departure from meticulously reviewing TuringBot LLMs' suggested code line by line. Instead, developers quickly accept the AI-generated code. And if something doesn't work or fails to compile, they simply ask the LLM to regenerate it or fix the errors by prompting them back into the system. This method has gained traction for several reasons, notably the significant improvements in integrated development environments and agent platforms such as Cursor and Windsurf; voice-to-text tools like Superwhisper; and LLMs such as Claude 3.7 Sonnet. These advancements have made AI-generated code more reliable, efficient, and, importantly, more intuitive to use, keeping developers' hands off the keyboard and eyes on the bigger picture. The viral reaction to Karpathy's concept of vibe coding, with close to 4 million instant views and countless developers identifying with the practice, underscores a broader shift in the software development paradigm. This shift aligns with Forrester's insights on TuringBots, which predicted a surge in productivity through AI by 2028. The reality is outpacing expectations, however, with significant impacts occurring much sooner. Vibe coding won't fade away. The advent of vibe coding and the proliferation of TuringBots are creating two distinct types of developers. On one side, developers will transform into product engineers who, while perhaps adept at traditional coding, excel in utilizing generative AI (genAI) tools to produce 'apparently working' software based on domain expertise and some knowledge on the steps and tools needed to build software. These developers focus on the outcome, continuously prompting AI to generate code and assessing its functionality with no understanding of the underlying technology and code. The philosophy is to just keep accepting code until it does what you want. Not only that, but they don't spend hours fixing a bug or finding the problem, since they can ask a well-trained coder TuringBot to do that for them or can just ask it to roll back and regenerate the code again. This approach may challenge our classical view of computer science skills, suggesting a shift toward developers who are more orchestrators of software development process steps than coding craftsmen. The concern of how we'll develop good developers over the years is gone, because you'll trust AI to do a good job. And if you want good developers, genAI will help those on the development trajectory learn faster. On the other side of the spectrum are the high-coding architects. These individuals possess a deep understanding of coding principles and are essential for ensuring that software meets crucial service-level agreements such as security, integration, and performance before deployment. It's kind of what good developers do today. Their role becomes increasingly critical as the reliability and complexity of AI-generated code grows. For only the super-critical IT capabilities, most likely for back-end code, these high-coding capable architects need to write, review, and edit code while also making sure that the TuringBots have all the context they need to do a better job. As AI-generated code becomes more trusted, the barrier to entry for software development lowers, giving rise to a growing population of vibe-coding developers. These individuals use natural language, not as a specification language but as the only interface to generate substantial portions of code and entire applications. As a result, high coding democratizes software development, just as low-code did for businesspeople. As I've always recommended for TuringBots, testing should once more be relaunched as a key validation step. For building a weekend project or a product demo to get funding, vibe coding would work just fine, but it requires more scrutiny for being adopted by enterprises and mature product vendors. In fact, this approach necessitates a reassessment of testing and quality assurance processes for everything that comes out of vibe coding. Organizations must place a greater emphasis on end-to-end functional testing, which, ironically, can also be facilitated by LLMs at the request of the product engineers. In fact, product engineers and/or testers could just ask the LLM to both generate and execute the end-to-end tests for them. Looking at AI-enabled software development through a traditional lens and for enteruprise use highlights significant risks. Is it wise to deploy unreviewed (and, at best, automatically tested) code directly into production? As AI improves, many of these concerns may diminish, but here are some critical considerations: These questions highlight the evolving challenges and opportunities in software development as AI technologies advance. In my view, vibe coding will further reduce the complicated and elaborated SDLC to just 'generate' and 'validate,'. Vibe coding is not just a fad but a signal of the transformative impact that AI is having on software development. As this trend continues to evolve, it will be imperative for enterprises and software vendors to adapt their strategies, recognizing the value of both product engineers and coding architects. This developer duality will be crucial in navigating the future landscape, where the ability to harness AI effectively will distinguish successful software projects. The challenge will be in balancing innovation with the rigor of traditional software development principles, ensuring that the software not only works but that it scales securely, efficiently, and reliably. Platforms will have to quickly move from supporting AppDev to supporting AppGen, which is not a simple exchange of words. This post was written by VP, Principal Analyst Diego Lo Giudice and it originally appeared here.
Forbes
21-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
High School Dropout Launches VibeGrade To Help Teachers Grade Faster
Musa Aqeel, Co-Founder of VibeGrad, and Daniel Martinez, Founder of VibeGrad Vibegrade, a YC-backed startup using AI to help teachers deliver high-quality feedback in their own style, 10x faster, announces its public launch today. The company works directly inside Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Canvas, reading and annotating essays based on the teacher's rubric — just like a teacher would. Already saving over 500 school days of manual grading across 12,000 papers, Vibegrade learns from each teacher's style to deliver feedback that actually helps students improve. It doesn't replace teachers — it helps teachers help their students, to make education better for everyone. The startup was founded by 18-year-old high school dropout Daniel Martinez and 19-year-old Musa Aqeel, a second-year college student who also dropped out to go all-in on building AI for teachers to grade papers faster. The two met in high school and had been building side projects together ever since—one of their earliest was a tool that let partygoers scan a QR code and add songs to a shared Spotify queue. 'I've always cared a lot about education. I just think the way we do it right now is super outdated. It doesn't work well for the teachers or for the students—because students aren't able to get the feedback they need to improve, and teachers are overwhelmed', Daniel says. Daniel, who has been coding since age 10, always knew he wanted to build a company. For him, the path to impact was through tech. Together with Musa, they set out to improve—not replace—educators by giving them superpowers through AI. And the early demand proves the need: all 72 of their current customers are paying out of pocket. If you think it's pure luck to get accepted to YC at this age, you're wrong. Together, they applied to YC five times before being accepted. It wasn't their first attempt—they'd been working hard to make it happen, testing out different ideas and product iterations.'We were on a FaceTime call when we got the email about the interview', Musa recalls. 'We were shocked but also ready.' A major turning point was when Musa officially joined as co-founder. 'YC looks at the people, not just the product,' he says. 'Daniel had been building great stuff on his own, but having a partner makes the startup journey less lonely and more resilient.' Daniel and Musa believe that YC saw the energy they brought as a team—their history of building useful products together, the traction they'd achieved, and their commitment to solving a real pain point in education. They also believe the timing is right. Martinez adds, 'When I first started, there was a lot of skepticism about AI in education. Nobody wanted to touch it. Now there's been a major shift in sentiment, and everyone's starting to use it more. It's a big opportunity.' As you might expect, leaving school wasn't an easy conversation. 'I told my dad this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity', Musa Aqeel says. 'At first, he was skeptical. He has a degree and believed in the traditional path. But once he looked into YC and saw the companies that came out of it, he understood the value.' Daniel's mom was supportive from day one. 'She knew how much I'd been building over the years, and when I finally got into YC, she was just happy for me.' Both Daniel and Musa faced a lot of skepticism back in school and college—from classmates, teachers, and friends. Daniel explains, 'I only had four credits left. I told them I was going to San Francisco for three months to build a company, and I gave them the acceptance letter. They said, 'Oh, that's cool—congrats—but since you won't be in the country or taking classes, we can't let you stay.' Surprisingly, Daniel's own teachers were not the first to use or test the product—despite his efforts, he never heard back from them. Some even expressed concerns about using AI for this purpose. 'It's really hard to build when nobody believes in you,' Musa says. 'When the people around you aren't supportive, you have to focus on what matters to you—and just keep building.' Today, VibeGrade is being used in schools across the country, saving teachers hours each week. As attitudes toward AI in education continue to evolve, demand is growing fast. Failure doesn't scare them. 'We've failed before', Daniel Martinez says. They believe the mentorship, guidance, and experience of being in YC—surrounded by other founders—will help them grow tremendously in the coming months. And they're confident the lessons they're learning will stay with them for the rest of their careers. 'It's definitely not going to be the last thing we ever do', Musa is convinved. As VibeGrade enters its next chapter, Daniel and Musa are focused on scale—bringing their AI-powered feedback tool to more classrooms and more educators nationwide. With a clear mission, growing traction, and the backing of Y Combinator, they're not just reimagining how grading works—they're helping reshape the role of teachers in the age of AI. In a world where innovation often overlooks the classroom, VibeGrade is proving that transformative tech can—and should—start with education.
