Executive Summary
This report reads the supply side of enterprise AI from the people building it: YC founders in the Open Future Forum community. Two questions carry the edition. Who do founders believe owns the buying decision inside the companies they sell to, and how are they charging for what they sell. Open Future Forum reads the buyer side of the same market in its finance, marketing, and security rooms. This report reads the sellers those buyers meet, on the largest first-party bases in the network.
The answers describe a market selling around the org chart rather than through it. Founders name the business-unit leader (39 percent) and the CIO or CTO (36 percent) as the buying owner, with finance at 28 percent and bottom-up users at 11 percent (base 148, any-mention). Security is named by zero of 148. Only 4 percent say they are still figuring out who their buyer is: this is a room that believes it knows its door.
On pricing, the shift the analysts forecast for 2030 is already the norm in this room. Of the 148 founders who answered, 136 are charging today, and the Founder AI Pricing Index, the share of those charging who meter value through usage-based or outcome-based pricing, stands at 68 percent. Per-seat, the default of the SaaS era, is the least used model in the room at 21 percent. Pricing that meters value only works when the product completes work, so the Index doubles as a transformation signal: these founders are betting their revenue models on AI doing whole units of work.
Because the founder rooms are open-application rather than invitation-only, this lane carries the biggest bases in the network, and the flagship metric clears the program's 40-response floor at first publication. Between the early-July and mid-July pulls the direction of every headline held as the base grew to 148, one rank flipped, and this report records both. Every figure states its base. This is a selective room, not a probability sample of all founders, and the report says so.
The Answers We Have Now
This section is the data in hand: application records and instrument questions from two Open Future Forum YC founder events in 2026, invitation outreach excluded from every count. Registration forms collect screening data; the instrument questions collect what founders say in their own answers. The two layers are kept separate throughout, and the base sits on the face of every figure.
Finding 1: The room is current-batch and founder-heavy
Across the two events, 340+ distinct applicants applied, invitation outreach excluded. Of applicants stating a title, roughly six in ten are founders or CEOs, with CTOs the next block. Among the 207 applicants with a parseable YC batch year, 33 percent come from 2026 batches, 19 percent from 2025, and 25 percent from 2024: 77 percent from the last three years. This is not an alumni reunion. It is the current cohort of AI companies, read while they are still choosing their buyer and their pricing.
Finding 2: Founders sell to the business unit and the technology office
Asked who owns the buying decision inside the companies they sell to, the business-unit leader leads at 39 percent, the CIO or CTO at 36 percent, finance at 28 percent, other at 12 percent, and bottom-up individual users at 11 percent (base 148, any-mention, sums past 100). Security and the CISO were named by zero respondents. Just 4 percent are still figuring it out. The supply side is building, pricing, and pitching around the security review, not through it, and the buyer it has chosen is the seat closest to the work.
Finding 3: Usage and outcomes are the default pricing, not the frontier
Of the 148 founders answering the pricing question, 136 are charging today, a 92 percent monetization rate that is itself a finding: this room is post-revenue, not pre-revenue. Among those charging, usage-based pricing leads at 46 percent, outcome-based at 26 percent, flat subscriptions at 26 percent, and per-seat at 21 percent (any-mention). Combined, 68 percent charge on usage or outcomes: the Founder AI Pricing Index reading for this edition. Per-seat, the default of the SaaS era, is the least used model in the room. The pricing follows the product: seats price access, usage and outcomes price completed work.
Finding 4: The seat gap, read from both sides
The founder read pairs with the buyer-side read from the Open Future Forum finance rooms. Inside companies, the CEO is the most named signer of a new AI purchase at 47 percent, finance at 25 percent, the CIO or CTO at 23 percent (base 87, any-mention). Founders selling in aim first at the business unit and the technology office, and none aim at security. The seat that signs is not the seat being pitched, and the seat that answers for the risk is on nobody's list. That gap is where sales cycles stall and where shadow AI takes root.
Honesty notes
- Figures are floors of distinct applicants across the two events; invitation outreach rows are excluded from every count. Application is not attendance.
- Instrument answers are application-stage responses, role-mixed: mostly founders and CEOs, with CTOs and other operators alongside. Bases are on the face of every figure.
- The room self-selected into AI-founder events and skews early-stage and Bay Area. The buyer read describes how new AI enters companies, not how the largest enterprise contracts close.
Defensible claim language, from the data in hand
- "In 2026, two Open Future Forum YC founder events drew 340+ distinct applicants, 77 percent of batch-identified applicants from 2024 through 2026 batches."
- "Among 148 founders asked who owns the buying decision inside the companies they sell to, the business-unit leader leads at 39 percent and the CIO or CTO at 36 percent; zero named security or the CISO. Any-mention."
- "The Founder AI Pricing Index reads 68 percent: the share of charging founders in the Open Future Forum YC rooms pricing on usage or outcomes (base 136)."
Early Signal from the Room: What Grew and What Held
This report watches one thing above all as its bases grow: whether the direction holds. The founder instrument gives a clean test. The early-July pull carried a base of 92 on both questions. This edition reads the same questions at base 148, a 61 percent larger base, and reconciles every figure across the two pulls.
What held. Security at zero: 0 of 92 then, 0 of 148 now. The sharpest claim in the data, that not one founder names the CISO as their buyer, survived a 61 percent base increase without a single exception. The pricing shift held too: roughly two thirds of charging founders on usage or outcomes at both pulls, 64 percent of 83 then, 68 percent of 136 now. The monetization rate held at roughly nine in ten charging. Finance as buyer held within a few points (20 percent then, 28 percent now, any-mention).
What moved. The rank at the top flipped. At base 92 the CIO or CTO read as the most named buyer at 43 percent, with the business unit at 38 percent. At base 148 the business unit leads at 39 percent and the CIO or CTO reads 36 percent. The gap between the two seats was inside the noise of a small base then and it still is now; what the flip signals is not a shift in the market but the honest width of the error bar. Any claim built on the old rank, that the CIO or CTO is the most named seat, should now be read as "the business unit and the technology office, roughly tied, far ahead of everyone else." This report states the movement so its own record stays reconcilable, pull over pull.
The zero held. The two-thirds pricing read held. The CIO-versus-business-unit rank flipped inside the margin of a small base. Read this edition's figures as the first two points on a line: the test this series applies before trusting a number is whether the direction survives a bigger room, and on this pull it did. Open Future Forum YC founder rooms, bases 92 (early July) and 148 (this edition), any-mention.
By the Numbers
The founder market, in the figures the market is citing in 2025 and 2026. External benchmarks are attributed to their sources and used for context only. The Open Future Forum figures are reads from our own rooms, with the base shown.
- At least 40 percent of enterprise software spend is expected to shift to usage, agent, or outcome pricing by 2030 (Gartner). Intercom's per-resolution pricing is the vendor example already in market. The Founder AI Pricing Index reads that shift already at 68 percent inside this room.
- 47 percent of enterprise AI deals reach production, against a roughly 25 percent conversion rate typical of SaaS; enterprise generative AI spend reached $37 billion, growing 3.2x (Menlo Ventures).
- Innovation budgets fell from 25 percent to 7 percent of enterprise AI spend in a year, while spend grew roughly 75 percent: AI is moving into core budgets (a16z, How 100 Enterprise CIOs Are Building and Buying Gen AI in 2025).
- 72 percent of CEOs call themselves the main AI decision-maker (BCG AI Radar 2026, a survey of 2,360 executives). The pen sits at the top; the founders in this report pitch lower.
- The counterweight: roughly 95 percent of generative AI pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss impact (MIT); 42 percent of companies abandoned at least one AI initiative in 2025, up from 17 percent (S&P Global Market Intelligence); more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects are expected to be canceled by end 2027 (Gartner); only 7 percent of firms have fully scaled AI (McKinsey).
- The rebuttal: three in four senior leaders at large US companies report positive returns on generative AI, with 82 percent weekly use (Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective, Accountable Acceleration, about 800 senior leaders, October 2025).
- Agent deployment at $1 billion-plus organizations rose from 11 percent to 53 percent between early 2025 and mid 2026, while only 26 percent of leaders have real-time visibility into AI operating cost (KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse).
- Roughly one in five US businesses use AI in a business function, 17 to 20 percent across the late-2025 and spring-2026 readings, and 57 percent of adopters use it in three or fewer functions (US Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey and its AI supplement). The rooms in this report sit far above that baseline; the gap is the selectivity of who is applying.
- The agentic AI security market is forecast to grow from $1.65 billion in 2026 to $13.52 billion by 2032, a 42 percent compound annual rate (MarketsandMarkets). Bessemer Venture Partners has called securing AI agents the defining cybersecurity challenge of 2026.
From our own rooms, with the base shown:
- 340+ distinct applicants across two YC founder events (Open Future Forum, 2026).
- Buyer ownership: business unit 39 percent, CIO or CTO 36 percent, finance 28 percent, users 11 percent, security zero (Open Future Forum YC founder rooms, base 148, any-mention).
- Founder AI Pricing Index 68 percent; within the 136 charging: usage 46 percent, outcomes 26 percent, flat 26 percent, per-seat 21 percent (base 136, any-mention).
- Batch mix: 77 percent of batch-identified applicants from 2024 through 2026 (base 207). Sector, free-text answers each counted once: enterprise 29 percent, fintech 13 percent, healthcare and life science 9 percent, consumer 7 percent, other and mixed 42 percent (base 317).
The Thesis, in One Line
The founders building AI have already chosen their buyer and their business model: they sell completed work to the seat closest to it and charge when it works, and the two seats they skip, finance signing above and security answering below, are where the enterprise will meet them next.
What the Founder Sells Into, Seat by Seat
The founder read pairs with what the buyer side says in the other Open Future Forum rooms: one market, read from both ends. Where this edition's larger base updates the early-July read, the update is stated. Bases are on every figure; each room is a selective sample.
The CEO
The most named signer of a new AI purchase inside companies at 47 percent (Open Future Forum finance rooms, base 87, any-mention), consistent with BCG finding 72 percent of CEOs calling themselves the main AI decision-maker. Yet founders barely pitch the top: their named buyers are the business unit and the technology office. The seat that signs is the seat least sold to.
The CFO
Named as the buying owner by 28 percent of founders (base 148) and as the internal signer by 25 percent (base 87). The Open Future Forum finance rooms show why the pitch stalls there: proving ROI is the top blocker to AI spend at 54 percent, and 62 percent of the finance rooms expect measurable return inside six months (base 87). Outcome pricing, used by 26 percent of this room, is the founder's answer to that seat: it converts the ROI proof from the buyer's burden into the vendor's.
The CIO or CTO
The door the market knocks on: 36 percent of founders name the technology office as their buyer (base 148), while it signs internally at 23 percent (base 87). On the base-92 read this seat led at 43 percent; on the larger base it now runs roughly level with the business unit. Still the highest-volume named entry point alongside it, and the channel where a review attached at entry prevents shadow AI later.
The CISO
Named by zero of 148 founders, a zero that held from the base-92 pull to this one, a 61 percent larger base. Meanwhile, in the Open Future Forum security instrument, 62 percent of respondents name securing AI agents and their access as the biggest AI security problem on their desk, and 69 percent govern AI without a dedicated budget line (base 26, directional). For now, that governing seat sits outside the founder's sales motion, less by neglect than by the sequence of an early-stage sale.
The business-unit leader
The founders' top target at 39 percent (base 148), up from second place on the smaller base, and an internal signer at 17 percent (base 87). The seat closest to the work and furthest from the inventory: the first place shadow AI takes root, and the reason the security rooms are full.
The CMO and the growth leader
The furthest along on agents on the buyer side: in the Open Future Forum go-to-market room, 31 of the 38 registrants answering the stage question are past exploration, nine running agents in production (base 38, counts, directional). That room's own first ask, recorded in its sessions, was checks and balances for agents. Marketing is where the usage-and-outcome products this room is building meet a buyer already running them, and already asking who audits them.
The venture investor
In the Open Future Forum investor room, asked who increasingly owns the AI buying decision across their portfolios, the CEO and the CIO or CTO tied as most named, with none naming security (base 20, counts, directional). The capital pattern mirrors the founder pattern: money aimed at the doors that buy easily.
The Same View, by Vertical
The sector question in the founder rooms is free-text, so the first-party read is a pattern rather than a clean distribution: each answer counted once, enterprise leads at 29 percent of the 317 answers, fintech at 13 percent, healthcare and life science at 9 percent, consumer at 7 percent, with insurance, supply chain, and marketing technology recurring in the tail. The founders are building where the budgets are. External adoption benchmarks, representative of 2026 cross-industry surveys and attributed to McKinsey, Deloitte, and NVIDIA, frame each lane.
Financial services
Around 85 to 89 percent adoption on Deloitte's numbers and the best-proven returns. For the 13 percent of this room building fintech, the buyer is mature and the regulator is present: outcome pricing meets an examiner who will ask how the outcome was measured, and the security review founders elsewhere skip arrives early here.
Technology and software
The highest adoption of any sector, around 92 percent, and this room's densest market: enterprise software is both what most of these founders sell and who they sell to. Usage-based pricing is native here, which is why it leads the room at 46 percent.
Healthcare and life sciences
The fastest accelerator, from roughly 38 percent adoption in 2024 to about 67 percent in 2026. The 9 percent of this room building here faces the longest sales cycles and the strongest necessity case: regulated data makes the business-unit door harder and the governance conversation unavoidable.
Manufacturing and industrials
Around half to two thirds adopted, concentrated in predictive maintenance and supply chain, and a recurring tail mention in this room. The cost-out case is the cleanest ROI story in the dataset: downtime is the one loss every plant already prices, which suits outcome pricing.
Retail and consumer
Among the highest adopters of agentic AI, close to half of firms, with agents facing customers directly. The 7 percent of this room building consumer meets the shortest path to production and the most public failure mode: a consumer agent's mistake is a headline.
The pattern across the verticals is the founder's version of the one the buyer-side rooms show: the vertical does not change the buyer question or the pricing question. It changes how fast the sale closes and how early the governance conversation arrives.
What AI People Say About the Founder's Market
The reckoning
The dominant operator story of 2026 is a reckoning on return, and it lands hardest on the sellers. MIT found roughly 95 percent of generative AI pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss impact. S&P Global Market Intelligence found 42 percent of companies abandoned at least one AI initiative in 2025, up from 17 percent the year before. Gartner expects more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of 2027, and McKinsey finds only 7 percent of firms have fully scaled AI. Uber capped monthly per-tool spend on agentic coding after exhausting an annual budget in four months (Bloomberg), and Klarna publicly reversed parts of its AI-first staffing bet. For a room of founders whose revenue meters on usage and outcomes, abandonment is not a customer's write-off. It is the founder's churn.
The counter-case
The builders and their backers read the same market and see accountability arriving, not demand leaving. Enterprise generative AI spend reached $37 billion, growing 3.2x, and 47 percent of enterprise AI deals reach production against a 25 percent SaaS norm (Menlo Ventures). Innovation budgets collapsed from 25 percent to 7 percent of AI spend in a year because the spend moved into core budgets (a16z). Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective, a differently built read that points the other way from MIT, found three in four senior leaders at large US companies reporting positive returns. And the pricing this room has adopted is itself the counter-argument: outcome pricing is unsurvivable for a vendor whose product does not work. 68 percent of this room volunteering to be paid on results is the supply side underwriting its own claims.
Why it matters for this report
The two sides are not in conflict; the reconciliation is the point. The reckoning is the buyer refusing to fund AI that cannot prove itself, and the counter-case is the seller repricing so proof is built into the invoice. A market that abandons 42 percent of its initiatives while its founders move to charging on outcomes is not confused. It is converging on the same test from both ends. The Founder AI Pricing Index measures how much of the supply side has accepted the test.
The Evidence Behind the Theses
The report rests on five theses. Here is how each holds up against the data in hand and the outside record, support and counter-evidence, with a verdict on each, so the claims are calibrated rather than asserted. External figures are attributed and used for context; they are not Open Future Forum findings.
Thesis 1: AI pricing has moved to usage and outcomes. Well supported.
Support. The Founder AI Pricing Index reads 68 percent (base 136), per-seat is the least used model at 21 percent, and the read held as the base grew from 83 to 136. Externally, Gartner expects at least 40 percent of enterprise software spend on usage, agent, or outcome pricing by 2030, and Intercom's per-resolution pricing is already in market.
Counter. The room skews early-stage; large enterprise vendors reprice slowest, and hybrid answers (flat plus usage) show the models blending rather than replacing. The claim holds for new AI companies, which is what this room is.
Thesis 2: Founders sell around security, not through it. Well supported, and the report's strongest replication.
Support. Zero of 148 named security or the CISO, replicating the zero of 92 from the early-July pull on a 61 percent larger base. The security rooms show the mirror image: 62 percent name securing AI agents and their access as their top problem (base 26, directional).
Counter. Early-stage sellers rationally defer long security reviews; vendors selling into regulated enterprises meet security earlier in the deal. The claim holds for how new AI enters, not for how the largest contracts close.
Thesis 3: The pen and the pitch sit in different seats. Well supported.
Support. Inside companies the CEO is the most named signer at 47 percent (base 87); founders name the business unit and the technology office and were not even offered the CEO as an option. BCG's 72 percent CEO self-report widens the same gap from the top.
Counter. Any-mention questions on different bases are directional pairings, not a single survey; and the signer question was asked in finance rooms, which may over-name finance-adjacent seats. The gap is too wide for either caveat to close.
Thesis 4: The room is post-revenue. Well supported, stated for this room only.
Support. 92 percent of answering founders are charging today (136 of 148), and only 4 percent say they are still figuring out their buyer. Menlo's 47 percent production conversion says the demand side is meeting them.
Counter. Charging is not the same as material revenue, the instrument does not ask amounts, and application-stage answers may flatter. The claim is monetization, not scale, and the report words it that way.
Thesis 5: The buyer is consolidating toward the seat closest to the work. Early, treated as directional.
Support. The business unit leads the buyer map at 39 percent on the larger base, up a rank from the base-92 read, and bottom-up users add 11 percent: half the room names a buyer below the executive line. KPMG's agent-deployment jump from 11 to 53 percent describes work-level adoption outrunning central control.
Counter. The rank flip sits inside the margin of these bases, and the CIO or CTO reads within three points. This is the thesis the next edition's larger base will confirm or retire, and the report says so.
About This Report
What This Is
The YC Founder AI Report is a recurring read on two questions, asked of the founders in the Open Future Forum YC rooms: who owns the buying decision inside the companies you sell to, and how do you charge today. It reads the supply side of the market whose buyers Open Future Forum convenes in its finance, marketing, and security rooms, and it is built on a base most people cannot reach: open-application founder gatherings where the current YC cohorts show up in numbers, which is why this lane carries the largest first-party bases in the network and a flagship metric that clears its floor at Edition 1.
What This Is Not
This is not a market map: it does not catalog or categorize vendors. It is not a fundraising or valuation read: it never asks or reports what any company has raised or is worth at the company level. It is not a ranking: no company, fund, or product is scored or recommended. And it is not a probability sample of all founders or of the AI market: it reads one selective community, says so on every figure, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator.
The Gap It Fills
The analyst reports say how much enterprises spend on AI, and buyer-side surveys say who signs and what blocks the next dollar. None of them asks the sellers, at the application level, who they believe their buyer is and how they charge, tracked in the same community over time. The seat gap and the pricing shift are visible only when both ends of the market are read against each other. Reading the seller side, in the same community, tracked over time, is this report's job.
Definitions
- Founder AI Pricing Index. The share of charging founders whose pricing includes usage-based or outcome-based models, any-mention, reported with its base and tracked edition over edition. The flagship metric of this report.
- Buying owner. The seat the founder names as owning the buying decision inside the companies they sell to. A seller-side belief, not an audited org chart; its value is that it reveals where the pitch is aimed.
- Any-mention. Multi-select answers counted once per option mentioned; percentages can sum past 100. Stated on the face of every multi-select figure.
- Applicant. A distinct email that applied to an event, with invitation outreach rows excluded. Application is not attendance; figures are rounded floors of distinct applicants.
- Charging. Any pricing answer other than "Not charging yet." Charging is monetization, not a revenue amount; the instrument does not collect amounts.
- Respondent base. Every published figure states the number of respondents behind it. No headline figure is published below 40 responses; smaller bases are early directional reads, labeled as such.
What We Will Measure
The Flagship Metric: the Founder AI Pricing Index
Question (founders charging today): How do you charge for your product today: usage-based / outcome-based (you pay when it works) / per seat / flat subscription / not charging yet. The Index is the any-mention share of charging founders naming usage-based or outcome-based, reported as a single percentage with the full distribution beneath it. Its Edition 1 reading is 68 percent (base 136), above the 40-response floor at first publication, and it is the line tracked edition over edition.
Supporting metrics, continuing every edition: the buyer map (who owns the buying decision, any-mention, tracked seat by seat with security's zero watched explicitly); the monetization rate (share charging); and the batch mix (share of batch-identified applicants from the last three years, the read on whether the room stays current).
The instrument
Rotating deeper set, two or three per edition, entering the application flow at the next founder events: whether the company has passed a customer's security review (yes / in progress / not yet asked); average sales cycle in months; share of revenue on usage or outcome pricing (bands); who the founder meets first inside the customer versus who signs; and whether an enterprise deal has died in procurement, and at which seat. One trade-off, stated in the open: this series publishes its instrument, so published questions can prime future respondents. The program accepts that trade for transparency and applies it consistently across lanes.
How It Runs
Sample and Honesty
The figures describe the founders and operators in the Open Future Forum YC rooms, a selective sample skewing early-stage and Bay Area, not a probability sample of founders or of the AI market. Every headline figure states its response base, no headline is published below 40 responses, and directional reads are labeled. A smaller claim, fully backed, beats a larger one that invites the obvious critique.
Assets Each Edition Produces
- The published report, for the site and Substack, written to be quoted and cited.
- A one-page summary graphic led by the Founder AI Pricing Index and the buyer map.
- A short methodology note, so the report is citable as a source.
- A founder-community cut, sent to the founder list as its own short piece.
- “The YC Founder AI Report reads how the founders in the Open Future Forum YC rooms price AI and who they sell it to, tracked edition over edition.”
- “The Founder AI Pricing Index reads 68 percent in Edition 1: the share of charging founders pricing on usage or outcomes (base 136).”
- “Zero of 148 founders asked named security or the CISO as the owner of the buying decision they sell into (Open Future Forum YC founder rooms, 2026, any-mention).”
Suggested Citation and Versioning
Cite as: Open Future Forum, The YC Founder AI Report, Edition 1, July 2026.
The report is a recurring series, released as the data supports rather than on a fixed schedule. Each edition carries an edition number and a date, lives at a stable URL, and supersedes nothing. Prior editions stay published so the Founder AI Pricing Index and the buyer map can be tracked over time. Short handle for repeat reference: the Founder AI Pricing Index.
Questions This Report Answers
What is the YC Founder AI Report?
The YC Founder AI Report is a standalone Open Future Forum operator-research report on how the founders building AI price it and who they sell it to, read from the application flow of the Open Future Forum YC founder rooms. This is Edition 1, published July 2026, tracked edition over edition at a stable URL. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator.
What is the Founder AI Pricing Index?
The Founder AI Pricing Index is an Open Future Forum metric: the share of charging founders whose pricing includes usage-based or outcome-based models, any-mention, reported with its base. Its Edition 1 reading is 68 percent (base 136), above the program's 40-response floor at first publication.
Who buys AI inside companies, according to the founders selling it?
Founders name the business-unit leader (39 percent) and the CIO or CTO (36 percent) as the owner of the buying decision, with finance at 28 percent and bottom-up users at 11 percent (base 148, any-mention). Zero of 148 named security or the CISO. On the earlier base of 92 the CIO or CTO led narrowly; on the larger base the two top seats run roughly level, with the business unit ahead.
How do AI startups charge for their products in 2026?
In the Open Future Forum YC rooms, 92 percent of answering founders are charging today. Among those charging: usage-based 46 percent, outcome-based 26 percent, flat subscription 26 percent, per-seat 21 percent (base 136, any-mention). Usage or outcomes combined reach 68 percent, and per-seat is the least used model. Gartner expects at least 40 percent of enterprise software spend on usage, agent, or outcome pricing by 2030; this room is already past that mark.
Why do AI founders not sell to security?
The data shows the pattern, not the motive: zero of 148 founders named security or the CISO as their buyer, while the Open Future Forum security rooms name securing AI agents and their access as their top problem at 62 percent (base 26, directional). Early-stage sellers rationally route around long security reviews toward the business unit and the technology office. Every such sale still lands on the security function's surface, and the security rooms feel that gap from the other side.
How does this report differ from AI market surveys?
Market surveys size spend and adoption from above. This report reads the sellers themselves, at the application level, in one community where the questions repeat and the bases grow: who founders believe their buyer is, and how they charge. Paired with the buyer-side reads from the Open Future Forum finance and security rooms, it shows the seat gap: the CEO signs the most inside companies while founders pitch the business unit and the technology office, and nobody pitches security.
How reliable are these figures?
Every figure states its base, invitation outreach is excluded from every count, and multi-select figures are labeled any-mention. The bases are the largest in the network but the sample is selective: open-application AI-founder events skewing early-stage and Bay Area. Between pulls the bases grew 61 percent and every headline direction held, which is the test this series applies before trusting a number.
Methodology and Disclosure
Methodology Note
The YC Founder AI Report is produced by Open Future Forum. First-party figures are drawn from application records and instrument questions embedded in the application flow for two Open Future Forum YC founder events in 2026. Rows representing invitation outreach are excluded from every count. Demand figures are rounded floors of distinct applicants and describe applicant demand and composition, not attendance or spend. Instrument figures are application-stage answers, reported with the response base stated on every figure; multi-select questions are reported any-mention and can sum past 100 percent. Cross-lane figures cited for context are drawn from instrument questions in the Open Future Forum finance rooms (bases 185 and 87), security rooms (bases 26 and 10), go-to-market room (base 38), and investor room (base 20), each labeled with its lane and base where it appears, at their bases current to early July 2026. Respondents self-selected into AI-founder events and skew early-stage and Bay Area; nothing here is presented as a probability sample of founders or of the AI market. The founder bases grew between the early-July and mid-July pulls (buyer and pricing bases from 92 to 148) and the direction of every headline finding held, with the business-unit and CIO ranks trading first place inside the margin of a small base; the Early Signal section reconciles the two pulls. External benchmarks are attributed and used only for context.
Independence and Disclosure
- Open Future Forum runs the events and sells sponsorships. Murray Newlands is a Partner at IA Seed Ventures and does fractional advisory work with AI companies, disclosed because this edition covers the market those companies operate in.
- Sponsors do not see, shape, or approve the questions, the analysis, or the findings.
- The report never ranks, scores, or recommends specific companies or products. It reports aggregate behavior only, and no participant, company, or sponsor is named.
- The findings are the community aggregate. The report is not a lead-generation instrument, and respondent contact data is never passed to sponsors.
This statement runs in every edition.
About Our Events and Open Future Forum
Open Future Forum convenes founders and executives across a program of invitation-screened roundtables, dinners, mixers, and gatherings, held in partnership with leading financial institutions, law firms, and professional services firms. These institutions partner on the events; they do not endorse or contribute to this report, which is editorially independent. Peer sessions are held under Open Future Forum's community confidentiality norms: no participant is named, no company is identified, and identifying details are removed or generalized. The YC founder rooms behind this edition are open-application gatherings, screened at the door rather than at the invitation, which is why they carry the largest first-party bases in the network.
Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley, founded in 2019, with 100 events to date. It runs Forum Select, invite-only private events for C-suite executives, and Forum Events, open panels and gatherings, and convenes founders, finance, security, and growth leaders through the CEO Executive Forum, the CFO Executive Forum, the CMO Executive Forum, the AI Leaders Forum, and related peer groups. The YC Founder AI Report is part of its operator-level research program.
Sources
First-party sources: application records and instrument questions embedded in the application flow for two Open Future Forum YC founder events in 2026, published in aggregate only with the base stated at every figure, and cross-lane instrument reads from the Open Future Forum finance, security, growth, and investor rooms in 2026, each with its base stated.
Third-party figures are drawn from the sources below, attributed where cited and used for context only. Load-bearing figures were re-verified against the primary pages in July 2026; sources that update on a rolling cycle carry their release period.
- Gartner. Forecasts on software pricing models and agentic AI project cancellations. gartner.com
- Menlo Ventures. 2025: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise, December 2025. Enterprise AI spend, growth rate, and production conversion. menlovc.com
- a16z. How 100 Enterprise CIOs Are Building and Buying Gen AI in 2025. Innovation-budget shift and spend growth. a16z.com
- Boston Consulting Group. BCG AI Radar 2026, a survey of 2,360 executives. bcg.com
- MIT. The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, MIT Project NANDA. Pilot outcomes and measurable profit. nanda.media.mit.edu
- S&P Global Market Intelligence. Survey data on companies abandoning AI initiatives. spglobal.com
- McKinsey & Company. Research on AI scaling and adoption by industry. mckinsey.com
- Wharton Human-AI Research and GBK Collective. Accountable Acceleration: Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise, about 800 senior leaders at large US companies, October 2025. ai.wharton.upenn.edu
- KPMG. AI Quarterly Pulse Survey, US C-suite leaders at $1 billion-plus organizations, Q2 2026 release. Agent deployment and AI cost visibility. kpmg.com
- US Census Bureau. Business Trends and Outlook Survey and AI supplement, nationally representative AI use at US businesses. census.gov
- MarketsandMarkets. Agentic AI Security Market, Global Forecast to 2032. marketsandmarkets.com
- Bessemer Venture Partners. Commentary on securing AI agents as the defining cybersecurity challenge of 2026. bvp.com
- Bloomberg. Reporting on Uber's monthly per-tool caps on agentic coding spend. bloomberg.com
- Deloitte. Enterprise AI adoption by industry. deloitte.com
- NVIDIA. State of AI 2026. Industry adoption and return. nvidia.com
- Intercom. Per-resolution pricing for AI customer service. A vendor's own pricing, cited as a market signal, not a benchmark. intercom.com
External benchmarks are used for context only. They are not affiliated with this report and do not endorse it.
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