RESEARCH NOTE / 002YC 2020 → 2026COLLECTED 22 AUG 2026
THE ORACLE / COHORT PLATE 02AI answers reward evidence, not funding rounds.
AI RECOMMENDATION OBSERVATORY
The YC AI
Visibility Ledger
Where a featured cohort of YC-backed companies enters AI answers, where competitors replace them, and which citation surfaces can change the outcome.
Explore the cohort THE COHORT GAP 45 of 60 buyer queries were not won across all four sampled modelsMODEL COVERAGE 10 of 12 companies appeared in at least three sampled modelsRESEARCH WINDOW 240 answer observations collected on 22 August 2026
01Funding earns attention.
COHORT INTELLIGENCE
Funding earns attention.
Answers still have to be won.
Recommendation share measures how often a company appears inside a fixed, category-specific prompt set. It is directional, model-sensitive, and more useful as a map of opportunity than a universal league table.
12 FEATURED RECORDS STUDY ONLINE
NOCOMPANY / BATCHMARKETAI ANSWER SHARE4 MODEL COVERAGESTATUS / BRIEF
READING THE TABLE Shares are a sampled research signal within each company’s market. Select any row to open its query and citation brief below.
02Large companies can still
THE CAPITAL / ANSWER DIVIDE
Large companies can still
have small answer surfaces.
AI assistants do not inherit the venture market’s hierarchy. They reconstruct a recommendation from available pages, third-party evidence, current comparisons, and the specificity of the buyer’s need.
03Five buyer questions reveal
COMPANY OPPORTUNITY BRIEFS
Five buyer questions reveal
where the evidence is thin.
Each record shows five high-intent buyer questions, current answer leaders, and the evidence gaps visible in this four-model sample.
VOICE AI / W21 RECORD
Vapi
vapi.ai · 4/4 assistants · 305 returned citation instances
SAMPLED AI SHARE45%COLLECTED 22 AUG
Build the full growth brief QUERY OPPORTUNITIES
5 MEASURED QUERIESNOBUYER QUERYCURRENT WINNEROPPORTUNITYSTATUS
01HIPAA compliant AI phone agent
Retell AI100%Build now
02enterprise voice AI orchestration
PolyAI100%Build now
03voice agent API with low latency
ElevenLabs50%Open
04Twilio alternative for AI calling
Bland AI25%Open
05best voice AI platform for developersRetell AI0%Defend
MANAGED GROWTH / EXECUTION MEMO
The research already found the work.
We turn each missed query into a managed program across technical access, answer-ready content, and third-party citation acquisition.
Commission Vapi’s 90-day planMake the evidence retrievable
Crawl paths, structured pages, stable entities
Build the missing answer surfaces
Original research, comparisons, decision pages
Create independent corroboration
Digital PR, expert sources, community proof
04Directional by design.
RESEARCH METHOD
Directional by design.
Specific enough to act on.
This edition compares companies only within relevant buying contexts. It does not equate funding, search traffic, or company size with AI recommendation performance.
Build the cohort
Active YC-backed companies founded or funded from 2020 onward, selected for scale, category relevance, and public buyer interest.
Construct buyer queries
Generic category prompts are combined with workflow, company size, compliance, integration, and budget constraints.
Sample four assistants
The same prompt families are observed across major answer engines and normalized to company entities and product aliases.
Resolve missing surfaces
A query becomes an opportunity when a relevant company is absent or consistently outranked by a less suitable competitor.
Trace citations
Visible source patterns are grouped into owned pages, community proof, editorial authority, reviews, and ecosystem evidence.
Publish a useful preview
Every featured record includes five visible gaps and a citation preview. Deeper verification is completed during a managed research engagement.
RESEARCH INTEGRITY
Shares are a time-bound sample, not a permanent ranking. No company can pay to change a measured result. Managed-growth work is clearly separated from the public study.
How we executeTHE ORACLE / PRIVATE COMMISSIONEvery missing answer
is a build brief.
is a build brief.
FOR YC FOUNDERS & GROWTH TEAMS
Get the private version of your company record.
We’ll verify your highest-value missing queries, expose the full citation graph, and show the exact pages and outreach targets we would execute over 90 days.