---
title: "Y Combinator — AI hype score and trend · Above the Fog"
canonical_url: https://abovethefog.app/topics/y_combinator
as_of: 2026-09-27
updated: 2026-09-28T22:02:40Z
---

# Y Combinator (🌉 San Francisco)

[Home](https://abovethefog.app/index.md) › [Topics](https://abovethefog.app/topics.md) › Y Combinator

Y Combinator is 💤 Quiet on Above the Fog’s AI hype radar: a hype score of 1 out of 100 on Sep 27, 2026, 2 points lower than 7 days before. Its attention is within the normal range across the monitored sources.

Y Combinator, the SF accelerator led by Garry Tan: batches (S26, F26...), Demo Days, and 'YC-backed' startups.

First seen on HN: front-page time (ClickHouse) · Sep 17 — the first monitored source to go above normal for it in the last 14 days.

Why this stage: within the normal range across monitored sources.

- **Stage:** 💤 Quiet — within the normal range across the monitored sources
- **Hype score:** 0.7 / 100 · 0 in 1 day · −1.5 in 7 days
- **In hype since:** not in hype now
- **Peak, 30 days:** 17.7 on Sep 18, 2026
- **Category:** 🌉 San Francisco
- **Part of:** [SF AI scene](https://abovethefog.app/topics/sf_ai_scene.md)
- **Official site:** [ycombinator.com](https://ycombinator.com)
- **Sources above normal:** 0 of 26 scoring it (0 independent families)
- **Stories in 7 days:** 16
- **Share of voice:** 0.1% of the radar’s attention in 7 days

## Where the attention comes from

“Normal” is the median of the source’s previous 14 normal days for this topic. A source is above normal when its value is at least 30% over that level and stands out from its usual day-to-day variation (z ≥ 2); the share is the part of the hype score that source explains. “× normal” is left blank when the normal level is 0.

| Source | Metric | Latest | Normal | × normal | Above normal | Share of score |
|---|---|---:|---:|---:|---|---:|
| Cerebral Valley (AI events) | events | 4 (Sep 26) | 2 | 1.7× | no | 100% |
| Mastodon (fediverse) | tag uses | 1 | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| Bluesky | trending | 0 (Sep 26) | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| Developer forums (Cursor, OpenAI, Hugging Face) | items | 0 | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| DEV Community (dev.to) | items | 0 | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| GitHub | new repos | 0 (Sep 25) | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| GitHub Trending | trending | 0 (Sep 26) | 0 | — | no | 0% |
| Google Trends (Trending now) | trending | 0 (Sep 26) | 0 | — | no | 0% |

## Stories behind it

1. [Show HN: Whiteboard \(YC W26\) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833867) — HN: front-page time (ClickHouse) (github.com) · Sep 24 · score 407 · 139 comments
2. [Show HN: Whiteboard \(YC W26\) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49833867) — Hacker News (github.com) · Sep 24 · score 333 · 120 comments
3. [YC S26 has a sovereign Starlink, Crowdstrike for agents, and an AI defense contractor. Am I crazy or is this batch different? \(i will not promote\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1wo4eng/) — Reddit (r/startups) · Sep 23 · score 17 · 29 comments
4. [Build Your AI Team \| A hands-on workshop with Turnstone \(YC W26\) for your everyday work](https://luma.com/rnn57zas) — Luma (SF AI events) (UpScaleX.AI Events) · score 13
5. [dhruvmorphic-eng/YC-Data-: Every Y Combinator company on one interactive globe. Search, filter, explore.](https://github.com/dhruvmorphic-eng/YC-Data-) — GitHub (dhruvmorphic-eng) · Sep 24 · score 1
6. [Show HN: Whiteboard \(YC W26\) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design](https://dev.to/technoblogger14o3/show-hn-whiteboard-yc-w26-an-open-source-ide-for-thoughtful-software-design-3gkk) — DEV Community (dev.to) (#ai) · Sep 25 · score 1 · 0 comments
7. [a16z is challenging Silicon Valley’s love for drop-outs by launching a school](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/22/a16z-is-challenging-silicon-valleys-love-for-drop-outs-by-launching-a-school/) — Tech press (RSS) (TechCrunch) · Sep 22
8. [Bubble Lab \(YC W26\) X Lunatechs - Pretty Cool Demos and Pre-Tech Week Social!](https://luma.com/s3b7lwtt) — Cerebral Valley (AI events) (San Francisco, California)
9. [Launch HN: Vespper \(YC F24\) – SOTA Docx MCP https://www.vespper.com/blog/launching-vespper-docx-mcp Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49881505 #HackerNews #LaunchHN #Vespper #YCF24 #Docx…](https://mastodon.social/@h4ckernews/117349928698497545) — Mastodon (fediverse) (mastodon.social) · Sep 28 · score 0 · 0 comments
10. [Show HN: HN.watch – Videos of all Hacker News posts](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49879401) — Hacker News (hn.watch) · Sep 28 · score 117 · 69 comments
11. [applying for W'27](https://www.reddit.com/r/ycombinator/comments/1wo3129/) — Reddit (r/ycombinator) · Sep 23 · score 5 · 12 comments
12. [Show HN: Training a model to identify AI web content from structure alone](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49800566) — Hacker News (arxiv.org) · Sep 22 · score 73 · 26 comments

## Themes

What its stories of the last 7 days are about: the 13 of them the Jev model kept as about the scene, by theme (a story can carry several themes):

- [Agents](https://abovethefog.app/themes/agents.md) — 23% of its stories
- [Companies & business](https://abovethefog.app/themes/companies_business.md) — 23% of its stories
- Other tech — 23% of its stories
- [Protocols & infra](https://abovethefog.app/themes/protocols_infra.md) — 23% of its stories
- [Models](https://abovethefog.app/themes/models.md) — 7.7% of its stories
- Other AI — 7.7% of its stories

## Related topics

- **Part of:** [SF AI scene](https://abovethefog.app/topics/sf_ai_scene.md)
- **Key people:** [Garry Tan](https://abovethefog.app/topics/garry_tan.md)
- **Mentioned with:** [AI agents](https://abovethefog.app/topics/ai_agents.md) (19 stories), [SF AI hackathons and events](https://abovethefog.app/topics/sf_hackathons.md) (3 stories), [Sam Altman](https://abovethefog.app/topics/sam_altman.md) (3 stories)

## Hype score, last 30 days

| Day | Hype score | Stage |
|---|---:|---|
| Sep 27, 2026 | 0.7 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 26, 2026 | 0.7 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 25, 2026 | 13.2 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 24, 2026 | 11.3 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 23, 2026 | 2.8 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 22, 2026 | 9.3 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 21, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 20, 2026 | 2.2 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 19, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 18, 2026 | 17.7 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 17, 2026 | 10.3 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 16, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 15, 2026 | 0.4 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 14, 2026 | 1 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 13, 2026 | 1 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 12, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 11, 2026 | 2.1 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 10, 2026 | 4.9 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 9, 2026 | 3.3 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 8, 2026 | 10.4 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 7, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 6, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 5, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 4, 2026 | 0.4 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 3, 2026 | 14.7 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 2, 2026 | 14.2 | 💤 Quiet |
| Sep 1, 2026 | 13.5 | 💤 Quiet |
| Aug 31, 2026 | 16.6 | 💤 Quiet |
| Aug 30, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |
| Aug 29, 2026 | 0 | 💤 Quiet |

[Open Y Combinator in the interactive map →](https://abovethefog.app/#topic=y_combinator)

---

Updated Sep 28, 2026, 22:02 UTC · Data: Above the Fog hype radar

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