Former Tesla and OpenAI AI scientist Andrej Karpathy used the opening day of Y Combinator’s AI Startup School in San Francisco on 18 June to outline what he calls the “Software 3.0” era. In a 40-minute keynote, Karpathy traced the evolution from hand-written code (“Software 1.0”) to neural-network-based systems (“Software 2.0”) and argued that large language models now allow programmers to write software through natural-language prompts. He predicted the coming “decade of agents,” describing foundation models as “fallible people spirits” whose output must be verified rather than trusted outright. Karpathy urged founders to build tooling that validates model-generated code and to rethink software development around iterative dialogue with AI systems instead of traditional syntax-heavy workflows. The programme also released a recorded interview with Elon Musk in which the entrepreneur discussed the risks of digital superintelligence and reiterated his ambition to make life multiplanetary. Both sessions have been made available on Y Combinator’s YouTube channel as part of the accelerator’s effort to equip early-stage companies for rapid advances in generative AI.