Y Combinator will hold its first-ever crypto startup interviews in New York, focusing on the fintech and cryptocurrency sectors.

According to Huoxun Finance, renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator will hold its first-ever offline interviews in New York City, focusing on fintech and cryptocurrency startups, aiming to support the growth of more companies in these sectors. YC stated that this is the first time it has moved a specific industry-specific interview process offline, with the goal of meeting founders of key emerging ecosystems. The interviews will be held in person in New York on May 21st. YC's standard investment condition for selected startups is a $500,000 investment in exchange for a 7% stake. Earlier this year, YC introduced this option, allowing startups to also receive funding in Circle's stablecoin USDC. YC's Winter 2026 round already includes several crypto and fintech startups, including Sponge Wallet (financial infrastructure for the AI agent economy), Unifold (crypto deposit service), Sequence Markets (a unified trading platform integrating crypto, real-world assets, and prediction markets), and Valence (a cross-platform prediction market trading platform). Since its founding in 2005, YC has invested in over 5,000 companies with a combined valuation exceeding $1 trillion. Its portfolio includes OpenAI, Airbnb, Stripe, and Reddit. YC's first crypto investment was in Coinbase in 2012, and since then it has invested in more than 150 crypto and fintech companies, including prediction market platform Kalshi, DeFi trading platform Axiom, and NFT marketplace OpenSea. Last year, YC partnered with Coinbase to support startups building on-chain infrastructure, a shift YC called "Fintech 3.0" at the time.