This Week at YC: Paul Graham on Founders, Heart Aerospace Flight, and Community Updates

This Week at YC: Paul Graham on Founders, Heart Aerospace Flight, and Community Updates The September 6th edition of the YC newsletter features discussions on founders and AI shifts, notable milestones from portfolio companies, an upcoming hackathon, and ecosystem headlines. Paul Graham spoke with YC Visiting Partner Vivian Shen about startups, AI, ambition, and founder qualities. Heart Aerospace completed a flight with the world's largest electric aircraft, featuring a 100-foot wingspan and a 25,000-pound takeoff weight. Ollama CEO Jeffrey Morgan noted an industry shift toward open models, reporting adoption by 9 million developers and 85% of the Fortune 500. YC announced the 'Own Your Intelligence' Hackathon focused on building personal agents, models, and workflows. Community headlines include AfterQuery becoming YC's fastest unicorn at $3.2 billion, Conveo's $50 million Series A, and Wafer securing acquisition offers. Interviews and Technology Shifts YC Visiting Partner Vivian Shen interviewed Paul Graham at YC's original Mountain View office regarding startups, artificial intelligence, ambition, and what makes great founders. In another feature, Ollama co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Morgan highlighted a major transition toward open-source models driven by coding agents, dropping costs, and closing performance gaps with frontier labs, based on usage across 9 million developers and 85% of Fortune 500 firms. Aviation and Events Heart Aerospace flew the largest electric aircraft to date, an airplane with a 100-foot wingspan and 25,000-pound takeoff weight that used $5 in electricity for takeoff. Additionally, YC introduced the Own Your Intelligence Hackathon, encouraging builders to extend platforms like QM and GBrain, experiment with software-factory concepts, and utilize tools like River AI and Memorable. YC Community Highlights Recent news from YC companies includes AfterQuery reaching a $3.2 billion valuation as YC's fastest unicorn, Wafer receiving acquisition offers alongside a $200M+ valuation for its non-Nvidia inference services, and Conveo closing a $50 million Series A round to expand its consumer intelligence platform.

YC 发布周报：Paul Graham 对谈、最大电动飞机试飞及多家校友企业新进展 Y Combinator 发布了2026年9月6日当周周报，重点介绍了与 Paul Graham 的对谈、Heart Aerospace 的电动飞机首飞进展、Ollama 对开源模型的观察，以及 YC 投资企业的融资与业务动态。 YC 客座合伙人 Vivian Shen 在山景城办公室与 Paul Graham 就创业、AI、抱负和优秀创始人标准展开对谈。 Heart Aerospace 试飞了全球最大的电动飞机，翼展达100英尺，起飞重量25,000磅，起飞仅消耗5美元电费。 Ollama 覆盖900万开发者和85%的财富500强，CEO 指出因编程智能体和成本下降，AI 模型正加速转向开源。 AfterQuery 以32亿美元估值成为 YC 最快独角兽；Conveo 获5000万美元 A 轮融资；Wafer 获2亿多美元估值及收购意向。 重磅访谈与生态观察 Vivian Shen 与 Paul Graham 重聚 YC 早期办公室探讨创始人与 AI 创业。同时，Ollama 联合创始人兼 CEO Jeffrey Morgan 表示，开源模型能力正迅速追赶前沿实验室，在编程智能体驱动与成本优势下，正显著重塑 AI 经济结构。 项目突破与社区新闻 Heart Aerospace 完成了翼展100英尺、起飞重量25,000磅的超大电动飞机首飞。YC 还公布了“Own Your Intelligence”黑客松活动，并汇总了被投动态：AfterQuery 达到32亿美元估值，非英伟达芯片推理服务商 Wafer 估值超2亿美元并收到收购要约，AI 消费者智能平台 Conveo 完成5000万美元 A 轮融资。

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This Week at YC **September 6th, 2026** | | | | ✨ **The Latest** | | | | | | | | [Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Founders](https://youtu.be/5bxp78i96S8) YC Visiting Partner Vivian Shen sits down with Paul Graham at the original YC office in Mountain View to talk about startups, AI, ambition, and what makes great founders. | | | | | | | | [The World’s Largest Electric Aircraft Just Flew](https://youtu.be/nM86DBOqgPM) Heart Aerospace (YC W19) just flew the largest electric airplane ever flown — a 100-foot wingspan, a takeoff weight of 25,000 pounds, and $5 of electricity to get it off the ground. | | | | | | | | [Open Models Change The Economics of AI](https://youtu.be/rY0wnfFHYbs) Ollama (YC W21) is used by 9 million developers and 85% of the Fortune 500, giving co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Morgan a unique view into which AI models people are actually using and how that’s changing. Right now, the biggest shift he sees is toward open models, driven by coding agents, falling costs, and capabilities that are rapidly catching up to the frontier labs. | | | | | | | | [Join Us For The YC Own Your Intelligence Hackathon](https://events.ycombinator.com/gbrain-qm-river-memorable-hackathon) You need to build and own your own intelligence: your own agent, your own models, your own memory. Explore new ways to extend QM and GBrain, build novel agent workflows and interfaces, experiment with multiplayer and software-factory ideas, and use River AI and Memorable to push beyond what today’s tools make easy. The goal is to make something ambitious, useful, or unexpected. | | | | | | 🌎 YC Community Highlights/news from YC and YC companies | | | | | | | | [**Meet The YC Startups Betting On What Comes Next**](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariashunina/2026/09/03/meet-the-yc-startups-betting-on-what-comes-next/) Forbes | | | | | | | | [**AfterQuery Becomes YC’s Fastest Unicorn At $3.2 Billion**](https://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/09/01/afterquery-becomes-ycs-fastest-unicorn-at-32-billion/) Forbes | | | | | | | | [**Wafer, An Inference Provider That Uses Non-Nvidia Chips, Lands Acquisition Offers and $200M+ Valuation**](https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/ai-agenda/wafer-inference-provider-uses-non-nvidia-chips-lands-acquisition-offers-200-million-plus-valuation) The Information | | | | | | | | [**Conveo Raises $50 Million Series A To Expand AI Consumer Intelligence Platform**](https://conveo.ai/mediakit/series-a) Conveo | | | | | | | | [**Making AI Agents Ready for the Real World**](https://www.argalabs.com/blog/making-ai-agents-ready-for-the-real-world) Arga Labs | | | | | | [🚀 **The Launchpad**](http://ycombinator.com/launches) [Some of the most recent launches from YC companies](http://ycombinator.com/launches) | | | | | | | | [Find more YC companies and discover new products](https://www.ycombinator.com/launches) | | | | | | [🔥 **Hacker News**](https://news.ycombinator.com) [Top posts from this week](https://news.ycombinator.com) | | | | | | | | [Read more on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com) | | | | | | **More YC resources:** [Apply to YC](https://www.ycombinator.com/apply) \| [YC Library](https://www.ycombinator.com/library) | | | | *Copyright © 2026 Y Combinator, All rights reserved.* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences](https://ycombinator.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=6507bf4e4c2df3fdbae6ef738&id=547725049b&e=[UNIQID]&c=df5cf37cb0) or [unsubscribe from this list](https://ycombinator.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=6507bf4e4c2df3fdbae6ef738&id=547725049b&t=b&e=[UNIQID]&c=df5cf37cb0). |