August 13, 2026

Y not

Hey there,

Here’s what we’re watching this week:

Q2’26 insurtech funding
Another autonomous driving milestone
Y Combinator call for startups

Let’s get into it.

Insurtech recorded its best funding quarter in four years, but deals continue to collapse.

Global insurtech funding hit $2.4B across 107 deals in Q2'26, the highest quarterly funding total since Q3'22.

Most of the capital went to a handful of companies, with eight mega-rounds driving the quarter. Investors are writing bigger checks, but to fewer companies, a trend that matches the wider venture market.

"The $100M+ mega-rounds grab a lot of attention, but insurtech deal sizes are rising across the board. For the insurance industry, that means many insurtech startups are showing up better capitalized to compete at a larger scale than ever before."

Chris Sekerak,

Lead Analyst, Insurtech Research @ CB Insights

P&C specifically had a strong quarter, with four companies (Corgi, ICEYE, Reserv, and Upstage) raising a combined $1.4B, representing 58% of the total.

Get the full quarterly breakdown in our State of Insurtech Q2'26 report.

It seems like forever ago when we were first promised autonomous vehicles, but this week they got one step closer to reality.

Zoox started charging fares in Las Vegas on August 10, the first autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals to ever collect a fare in the US.

While Waymo is the clear robotaxi leader with 500,000 paid rides per week across 10 US cities, others are starting to catch up.

Beyond Zoox, Tesla operates across several cities, while Motional is targeting fully driverless service in Las Vegas via Uber by year end.

Beneath them, a quieter set of companies keeps everything moving:

Hailo and Robosense build the chips and sensors
Waabi develops AI models and simulation tools
Point One Navigation provides the precise positioning

Widespread autonomous driving is still years away, but from chips to vehicles, the market is maturing.

See the full landscape in our autonomous driving market map.

Y Combinator wants these startups.

Y Combinator just published its Fall 2026 Requests for Startups list.

We ran each category against our data to see where the market already exists. Here’s a snapshot of what we found:

The future of American defense: Defense tech funding already hit a record $29.9B this year, with $21.2B in the US, across technologies like drones and orchestration platforms.
Data for the real world: Over 750 companies on our platform are capturing physical world data through robotics, teleoperation, and sensor networks.
New operating systems for the physical world: We mapped the physical AI models that help coordinate robots and autonomous vehicles across diverse environments.

YC has a strong track record of identifying where the next wave of company formation is headed. We already got these spaces covered.

CB Insights clients can track all 1,700+ markets in our market index.

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The CB Insights Newsletter Team

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