We fund smart founders, irrespective of what they want to work on.

What's the percentage of companies you've backed right now that have large language models? I think for Summer '23 it was close to 50% of the batch.

And it's pretty interesting! Like, I think a lot of people see that number and they think, "Oh, YC must have funded so many AI companies because we have this thesis about AI." And like, it's just easier to get into YC if you're an AI company because we just love funding AI companies.

And it's funny to us because we know how that's not true, and yet that's probably what, like 90%, that's probably how 90 plus percent of people actually think YC works.

How does it actually work? Should we tell people how it actually...? I think it's interesting. The smart founders apply to us with what they want to work on, and we fund the smart founders, like, irrespective of what they want to work on.

Actually, exactly! And so the fact that half the batch is working on AI says something much more interesting than just the YC partners think AI is cool. It's an emerging phenomenon of what the smart founders want to work on right now.