40 Y Combinator companies · 34 more beyond YC
Polish founders in tech
Companies with a Polish founder rarely look Polish on paper. YC files each startup under its US address, so its own directory shows almost no Poles. Count by founders and family roots instead and this directory finds 40 YC companies , with 2026 the record year at 8. Airbnb and ShipBob are included for their founders' Polish heritage. Beyond YC, Polish-born co-founders stand behind OpenAI, Snowflake, ICEYE and ElevenLabs, and people with Polish family roots helped build Apple and ran YouTube
Y Combinator 40 Beyond YC 34 Someone missing? ↗
Y Combinator Companies with Polish founders or family roots · batches W09 to F26
40
YC companies with Polish founders or Polish family roots
8
in the 2026 batches, the most of any year
30
still active · 5 acquired · 5 closed
$4.1B
reported and estimated funding; Airbnb's dated pre-IPO equity included
$100B
reported and estimated market caps, valuations and exits; Airbnb included
$13B
reported and estimated annual revenue or run-rate of active companies
Companies by batch year
Airbnb in 2009, three companies in 2012, and a record eight in 2026
Batch codes: W winter, S summer, F fall, X and P spring. Original status as of 09.10.2026; additions checked 11.10.2026
Where they sit
Best-guess HQ and offices of the YC companies. Tap a dot to list the companies there
North America 36 office pins · 6 metros
Europe 16 office pins · 7 metros
Directory HQ and office locations. Companies with multiple bases are pinned in each, so 40 companies make 52 pins
The 40 YC companies
Portraits show founders with Polish birth or family roots
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All 40
Active 30
Acquired 5
Closed 5
Office
Anywhere
Bay Area
Poland
New York
Elsewhere
Showing 40 of 40
Plain figures are reported. est. marks an estimate. ≥ marks a disclosed lower bound. Financial periods and estimate assumptions are in Details & sources
Beyond YC Polish founders of companies built outside YC, plus people with Polish family roots who founded or ran major tech companies around the world
$1.15T
reported and estimated value of 29 companies with a Polish founder; OpenAI included
$140.0B
reported and estimated annual revenue or run-rate of those 29 companies
$4.91T
Apple's market cap. Co-founder Steve Wozniak has Polish ancestry
The 34 companies
Values in USD; latest additions checked 12.10.2026. Financial periods vary; open Details & sources on the new cards
Link
All 34
Polish founder 29
Diaspora 5
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Value
Raised
Revenue
Newest
Link to Poland: Polish-born Polish parent(s) Polish ancestry Not confirmed · est. marks an estimate · ≥ marks a disclosed lower bound
Someone missing?
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How the numbers were built
Beyond YC: market caps are closing prices on 09.10.2026 for Apple, Snowflake and Roblox, and the latest available quote for CD Projekt (25.09) and Text (16.07), converted at about 3.7 PLN per USD. Private values are dated rounds, transactions or explicitly labeled estimates. InPost shows the 2026 Advent and FedEx takeover value. YouTube has no market price, so its value is an estimate of what it would be worth on its own
YC additions, checked 11.10.2026: Plane (formerly Pilot) is W17, Sixfold Bioscience W18, Segmed W20 and Turion Space S21. Plane's funding is a dated 2023 third-party report. The other three show documented equity or SAFE funding lower bounds; grants, growth debt and government contracts are excluded. Missing valuation and revenue figures are now estimates based on funding, company stage and published operating anchors. Financial periods, assumptions and sources are on each card
Raised means external primary equity or SAFE funding before going public. Debt, grants, IPO proceeds and purchases of existing shares are excluded. Missing amounts are educated estimates; $0M est. assumes no qualifying external equity. OpenAI's and ElevenLabs' totals are estimated sums of reported rounds. Revenue for OpenAI and ElevenLabs is their reported annualized run-rate
Six additions, checked through 11.10.2026: PayPal and Klarna show market caps on 09.10.2026 and FY2025 revenue. Wish shows its approximately $161M completed asset sale in April 2024 and FY2023 revenue. DeepL shows its May 2024 round; Crypto.com shows its July 2026 round and CEO-reported FY2024 revenue. Malwarebytes' value and revenue, and DeepL's revenue, are estimates with their periods and business scope explained under Details & sources
Latest additions: Airbnb is YC W09 and is included for its US-born founders' Polish ancestry. It shows an October 2026 market cap, dated pre-IPO equity funding, and audited FY2025 revenue. Delivery Hero shows an October 2026 market cap, dated pre-IPO funding, and FY2025 IFRS revenue converted from euros at the ECB's annual average rate. Starburst shows its last disclosed priced valuation (2022), disclosed funding, and its 2025 ARR milestone; the 2025 Citi investment had undisclosed terms. Open each card for dates and sources
Polish company additions: Allegro, Grupa Pracuj and Diagnostyka show 09.10.2026 market caps, converted at the NBP rate of 3.9022 PLN per USD. All four cards show FY2025 revenue; PLN figures use the ECB annual-average cross rate (PLN × 1.1300 ÷ 4.2397). Techland revenue is reported from company accounts by Puls Biznesu. Techland's value and the missing primary funding totals are estimates. Ownership buyouts are excluded from funding. Source links and assumptions are on each card
Community additions, checked 11.10.2026: ShipBob is YC S14, with a 2021 valuation, disclosed funding lower bounds and estimated annual revenue. Expensify, PlayWay, eobuwie.pl / MODIVO.com, RTB House and GetResponse belong to Beyond YC and show FY2025 revenue. Expensify and PlayWay show 09.10.2026 market caps. MODIVO.com shows an implied value inferred from conditional minority purchase terms announced in February 2025; its revenue covers eobuwie and MODIVO.com, excluding the wider parent group. RTB House and GetResponse revenue comes from filed-account reproductions; the original filings were not independently accessible. PLN revenue uses the 2025 ECB annual-average cross rate. Missing private values and funding are estimates. Each card explains dates, assumptions and financial scope
Financial estimates, added 11.10.2026: est. means a reported third-party estimate or our educated estimate, rather than a company disclosure. New estimates use rounded amounts and explain their assumptions and ranges in Details & sources. Totals combine reported and estimated market caps, private values, transaction values, annual revenue and run-rates across different periods; they are approximate comparisons. Closed companies retain their closed status. ≥ on an individual card marks a disclosed lower bound
Unicorn additions, checked 12.10.2026: Fireworks AI, Verkada and Upside belong to Beyond YC. Valuations are their latest disclosed priced rounds: July 2026, December 2025 and April 2022 respectively. Raised shows verified primary-equity funding lower bounds, excluding debt and mixed or undisclosed secondary transactions. Fireworks AI shows its July 2026 annualized revenue run-rate; Verkada shows an estimated 2026 management revenue forecast, not bookings. Upside’s estimated 2025 company fee revenue is modeled from transaction volume with explicit assumptions; cashback and retailer sales are excluded. Dates, ranges and sources are on each card
Links to Poland: Wozniak's father was of Polish descent. Susan and Anne Wojcicki's father, physicist Stanley Wojcicki, was born in Warsaw. Susan led YouTube as CEO but did not found it.
Reported: funding rounds from the article and press coverage, Pocket's ARR run-rate, stoic.'s ARR, Notabene's total from its funding profile, Alokai's "nearly $40M" from its investor case study
Raised, estimated: YC's standard check for the batch, plus any round the article mentions without an amount
Valuation, estimated: typical post-demo-day YC seed pricing for recent batches, last round size times a usual dilution for older ones. Acquisitions show an estimated deal value, since none were disclosed (Current Foods was a cashless deal)
Revenue, estimated: inferred from team size, customer counts and traction named in the article. For acquired companies it is revenue around the time of the deal. Treat these as order-of-magnitude guesses
Sources
My Company Polska, 09.10.2026 , built on Borys Musielak's "YC CEE founders" dataset (SMOK Ventures) · XYZ on Pocket · Notabene Series B release · Notabene funding profile · PSIK case study on Alokai · Nosh on Current Foods · AIN on Wordware · Finextra on Authologic
Beyond YC: Stock Analysis quotes for Apple , Snowflake , Roblox , CD Projekt and Text · American Bazaar on OpenAI · ElevenLabs on its ARR · Hustle Fund on ElevenLabs' valuation · The Recursive on ICEYE · Caproasia on ICEYE's Series F · PE Wire on InPost · Tubefilter on YouTube revenue · 23andMe sale release · Latka on Booksy · Wojciech Zaremba
Portraits: illustrations drawn from public photos of each person. Photo credits under Creative Commons: Steve Wozniak, from a photo by Gage Skidmore (source , CC BY-SA 3.0 ) · Susan Wojcicki, from a photo by TechCrunch / Steve Jennings, Getty Images for TechCrunch (source , CC BY 2.0 ) · David Baszucki, from a photo by Bloxy News (source , CC BY 3.0 ) · Marcin Iwiński, from a photo by AdamLiwinski (source , CC BY 2.0 ) · Anne Wojcicki, from a photo by TechCrunch (source , CC BY 2.0 )
Context: YC's own directory shows about 30 companies for all of Central and Eastern Europe. Musielak's count finds 155 of YC's 6,267 funded companies with at least one founder from the region
Additional portraits are AI-generated illustrations using public reference photos: Luke Nosek · Sebastian Siemiatkowski · Peter Szulczewski (photo: Jamel Toppin for Forbes) · Marcin Kleczynski · Jarek Kutylowski · Kris Marszalek
The latest matching portraits use public reference photos: Brian Chesky · Nathan Blecharczyk · Łukasz Gadowski · Wojciech Biela · Karol Sobczak · Kamil Bajda-Pawlikowski · Grzegorz Kokosiński · Łukasz Osipiuk · Piotr Findeisen
New matching portraits use identified public photos: Tomasz Dudziak · Paweł Marchewka (photo: Łukasz Gawroński) · Przemysław Gacek, Maciej Noga and Paweł Leks · Jakub Swadźba . Grzegorz Brochocki has an anonymous placeholder because no individually identified reference photo could be verified.
YC additions' matching illustrations use identified public reference photos: Matt Pelc (Drozdzynski) · Staszek Kolarzowski · Zuzanna Brzosko · Adam Koszek · Patryk Wiatr .
Community additions' matching AI illustrations use identified public reference photos: Marcin Grzymkowski · Simon (Szymon) Grabowski · Daniel Surmacz · George Wojciechowski · Krzysztof Kostowski (reference photo: Dariusz Iwański) · Witold Stankiewicz .
Unicorn additions: Polish Tech Minds, 27.08.2026 . Company disclosures and financial sources are linked under Details & sources on each card.
The Fireworks AI, Verkada and Upside portraits are matching AI illustrations based on identified reference photos: Paweł Garbacki · Filip Kaliszan · Joanna Kochaniak .
Docplanner’s additional matching AI portraits use individually identified reference photos: Grzegorz Krysiak (Just Join IT interview, 2018) · Jakub Skoczylas (MamStartup interview, 2017) .
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