[OC] Share of AI Companies by Y Combinator Funding Batch (2005-2025)

Data has been extracted from ycombinator.com/companies (alternatively I have also found an actively maintained dataset on Kaggle).

Note: Since Fall 2024, Y Combinator has shifted from biannual to quarterly funding rounds. Therefore, the x-axis in the chart should be interpreted as ordinal (by batch order) rather than as a continuous time series.

Methodology: For each company page (e.g. ycombinator.com/companies/airbnb) I normalized the provided description and industry tags, and searched for the following keywords: "ai", "artificial intelligence", "ai assistant", "aiops", "generative ai", "ai enhanced learning", "machine learning", "deep learning". If there is at least one match, the company is classified as ai, otherwise non-ai.

I used R, ggplot2.

I am currently doing some research into the ai trend, thinking that Y Combinator being one of the largest and most influential startup accelerators, can serve as a useful proxy for broader startup activity. Can anyone suggest other data points / indicators to better understand the current AI hype?