YC startups are abandoning .com

A cohort study of 6,135 YC companies reveals a major shift: .com now accounts for less than half of YC portfolio domains. In YC's early years, nearly every startup used a .com, but by 2026, only 47% do, with .ai surging to 27%. The data, grouped by YC batch year, shows the rise of alternative TLDs like .io, .co, .dev, and .app, and even rare one-offs like .ist and .al. The analysis also covers domain length trends, with the median domain at 12 characters.