Vibe Coding is booming in Silicon Valley – 6 startups you need to know
If you need proof that Vibe Coding is more than just hype, look to Y Combinator (YC), the legendary startup accelerator in Silicon Valley.
Startups that use AI to write code—or help others do so—are clearly on the rise. This was not only evident in YC's summer batch, but also emphasized by executives and investors.
YC President Garry Tan stated back in March that around a quarter of the founding teams at the time generated 95 percent of their code using AI. Diana Hu, a partner at YC, said in a YouTube video that Cursor will increasingly bring Vibe Coding to the accelerator starting in summer 2024.
The term “Vibe Coding” originates from OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy – and it is spreading rapidly in Silicon Valley: in tech job advertisements, interview processes at Meta, and now also in the startup ecosystem.
“Anyone who has followed past YC batches sees a clear pattern: Vibe Coding has evolved from a fringe experiment to a mainstream startup archetype,” says Gabriel Jarrosson, Managing Partner of Lobster Capital, a VC firm that invests exclusively in YC startups.
Another clue: YC's venture capital partners are now publishing best practices for vibe coding. "YC rarely institutionalizes advice unless they're convinced a pattern is permanent," says Jarrosson.
Jared Heyman, managing partner at YC's Rebel Fund, also sees the trend. According to him, the number of vibe coding startups has increased significantly in recent years—nine in spring 2025 alone. His assessment: "Vibe coding and the use of text for programming are here to stay."
However, the boom also has its downsides. Engineers told Business Insider that Vibe Coding is error-prone and quickly reaches its limits when it comes to more complex problems.
At the same time, the movement is constantly generating new ideas: from tools that allow users to program on their smartphones to platforms that create AI agents in plain English.
businessinsider
