Y Combinator Holds Fintech and Crypto Interviews in NYC

Y Combinator will conduct in-person interviews for fintech and crypto startups in New York City on May 21 to select companies for its Summer 2026 cohort.

The Summer 2026 batch starts June 23 in San Francisco. Startups accepted through the New York sessions will receive funding and access to YC partners and resources upon acceptance. YC’s standard offer is $500,000 for a 7% equity stake, with an option for founders to receive that funding in Circle’s USDC stablecoin.

YC is focusing the New York interviews on firms working on stablecoins, tokenization, trading, agentic commerce and capital markets, citing a growing concentration of startups in those areas in the city.

Nemil Dalal, a visiting partner at YC focused on crypto and a former Coinbase executive, wrote on X: “All of finance is going to run onchain. We want to back the founders making this reality.” He added that many fintech teams now use crypto rails even if they do not identify as crypto companies.

YC’s Winter 2026 cohort included fintech and crypto-focused companies such as Sponge Wallet, which builds financial infrastructure for the AI agent economy; Unifold, a crypto onramp services provider; Sequence Markets, a unified trading platform for crypto, real-world assets and prediction markets; and Valence, a platform for trading across prediction markets. The New York interviews aim to identify additional founders building infrastructure and market-layer products.

Founded in 2005, Y Combinator has invested in more than 5,000 companies with a combined valuation above $1 trillion. Its portfolio includes OpenAI, Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit. YC’s first crypto investment was Coinbase in 2012. Since then the accelerator has backed over 150 crypto and fintech companies, including Kalshi, Axiom and OpenSea.

Last year YC partnered with Coinbase on initiatives to support startups building onchain infrastructure. The accelerator has described the broader shift in financial technology as a move toward systems where payments settle instantly, assets can be held in self-custodial wallets and services operate around the clock across borders.