Four Irish Founders Accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 Batch

Four Irish founders are heading to Silicon Valley after being accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 batch, one of the world’s most influential startup programmes as they build companies in AI-powered financial technology and advanced manufacturing.

Founded by Ryan Morrissey and Bence Redmond, Blueprints lets users express a plain-English conviction about the world and turn it into an automated strategy for trading on prediction markets using AI. The company has secured places in both Y Combinator and NDRC and has processed more than $500,000 in trading volume from over 250 users since entering public beta.

Blueprints traces its origins to Ryan’s internship at Stripe in San Francisco, where exposure to global financial infrastructure and emerging technologies sparked an interest in building products for financial markets. Back in Ireland, he brought Bence on board and the two built the first version of Blueprints while enrolled in the Immersive Software Engineering programme at the University of Limerick. They registered the company in January 2025 before leaving the programme to pursue it full-time.

“Prediction markets reward genuine knowledge. If you have a deep understanding of something, whether that’s geopolitics, sport, or a particular industry, you can put that insight to work in a way that simply isn’t possible anywhere else. We built Blueprints so that people can actually act on what they know.” said Ryan Morrissey, Co-Founder, Blueprints

ProvenMetal builds benchtop X-ray systems that use AI to analyse circuit boards, helping identify faults before electronics are deployed in critical applications such as aerospace, medical devices and defence systems. The founders believe the technology could help strengthen domestic electronics manufacturing by making quality assurance faster and more reliable.

Co-founders Johnny Doyle and Will Carkner were previously building Syncra, a building-management IoT company, but knew its scale was limited. When they applied to Y Combinator, the feedback was blunt: a strong team, but an idea that was not ambitious enough. They had already been weighing a pivot and decided to commit fully to a new thesis in electronics manufacturing, flying to San Francisco to demonstrate their conviction at the first interview.

That interview earned them a second chance. YC invited them back two weeks later for an in-person round, asking for customer validation and an early prototype. They landed a week early, held more than 30 conversations with manufacturers and industry experts, secured five letters of intent, and built a software prototype. They secured a place in the Summer 2026 batch with an entirely new company.

“We were aware that our original idea had a ceiling and had been considering making a pivot. When YC said the same, we decided to make that jump with 100% conviction in the thesis. We booked our flights an hour before the first interview, and as soon as we landed we jammed our calendar full with prospective customers and industry experts. We both want to solve globally critical problems. ProvenMetal is how we are going to do it.” said Johnny Doyle, Co-Founder & CEO, ProvenMetal

The founders of both Blueprints and ProvenMetal are alumni of Patch, the OpenAI- and Stripe-backed community for exceptional young technologists, scientists and entrepreneurs based at Dogpatch Labs.

Both companies will spend the next three months in San Francisco as part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 programme before presenting to investors at Demo Day in September. Widely regarded as the world’s most influential startup accelerator, Y Combinator’s alumni include Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit, Coinbase and Dropbox.

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