Sam Altman offers $2 million in OpenAI tokens to every Y Combinator startup for equity

Sam Altman makes 'mic drop' offer to every Y Combinator startup | TechCrunch

During a Y Combinator event on Tuesday night, Sam Altman had what YC partner Tyler Bosmeny called a "mic drop moment." Altman offered $2 million worth of OpenAI tokens to every startup in the current class in exchange for equity in the startup. In other words, he promised that OpenAI would invest in the whole class, not with cash but with an allotment of AI tokens that startups can use to build their products. Y Combinator has about 169 startups in this cohort, according to its directory. As for how much equity each startup can expect to give up, that can't be determined at the time it signs the deal. It will depend on how much the startup is worth when it raises its first priced round -- a funding round in which investors assign the company a formal valuation. Y Combinator Managing Director Jared Friedman tells TechCrunch that the deal will be offered as an "uncapped SAFE," meaning, "it will convert in the next priced round, which is typically the Series A," he said. A SAFE is YC's standard agreement structure for its early-stage companies that raise money before their first "priced" rounds with valuations involved. An uncapped SAFE doesn't set a ceiling on that valuation, which can benefit founders because the higher the valuation at conversion, the smaller the slice of the company the investor receives. We've seen some discussion on X that this deal could amount to OpenAI holding about 2% equity should a startup hit a $100M valuation, though without seeing the actual terms, we can't verify that. For OpenAI, the deal works on two levels. Obviously, it gains equity in this crop of early-stage companies, meaning it profits if they succeed. But it also encourages them to build their business on and with OpenAI. Whether this locks them in for the long term or not, it does mean that they won't default to OpenAI's competitors, like Anthropic's Claude Code. The tokens themselves may sweeten the deal further: as inference costs continue to fall, what OpenAI is giving away today could cost it very little to produce tomorrow -- making the equity it receives in return look increasingly cheap. Unsurprisingly, there's already plenty of commentary on X on why this is, and isn't a good deal for startups. The pro-deal folks believe the deal helps startups eliminate one of their biggest costs -- AI infrastructure bills, which can spiral fast and consume a disproportionate share of an early-stage startup's budget at a time when money, typically, is already scarce. The buyer-beware folks have other warnings. Seed investor Jason Calacanis -- who has his own competing accelerator and fund -- went for the be-afraid-of-Big-Tech warning. "If you take these tokens, there's a non-zero chance that OpenAI will study exactly what your startup is doing, copy your idea and put your app into their free offering. This is the classic platform playbook -- be careful, founders!" he posted. The fear that OpenAI and Anthropic could swallow every good AI startup idea is real. The truth is, should OpenAI want to do that, it can, even when startups simply pay OpenAI for the tokens. By taking an equity stake, OpenAI may have more incentive for the startup's success, not less. Plus, as the former head of Y Combinator and a recurring guest speaker, Altman has as much access to every cohort and its ideas as he wants, deal or not. The bigger question for this YC batch is whether a budget of tokens from a single AI player is worth giving up additional equity. Y Combinator already takes a 7% stake for a $500,000 cash investment in its standard deal. In exchange, startups get access to YC's powerful Silicon Valley network of VCs, potential customers, and other founders. But equity is also precious for startups. Seed investors frequently take 20% or so, too. And startups need equity as compensation for their early employees. The bigger danger is that a startup will blow through its OpenAI token budget without enough to show for it, having surrendered equity in the process. Still, that may be better than paying for the tokens with cash, an even scarcer resource at that stage.

Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Exchange This Critical AI Asset for Startup Equity

OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman says he is offering $2 million in OpenAI API tokens to every startup in Y Combinator's current Spring 2026 batch, in exchange for an undetermined amount of equity. Altman made the announcement during a closed-door event for the current YC batch on Tuesday night, according to an X post from Y Combinator partner Tyler Bosmeny. On his own X account, Altman said that he is "excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups, both for how they work internally and the products they can build." The OpenAI leader has a long history with the famed San Francisco-based startup accelerator. He was part of YC's inaugural batch in 2005 at just 19 years old. He became the organization's president in 2014 when he was 28, and led investments into Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, and Reddit.

OpenAI to invest in YC startups using $2 million worth of tokens; here's what it means - The Economic Times

Artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI is offering $2 million worth of tokens to every startup in the current batch of startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC), CEO Sam Altman said in a post on Wednesday. "I am excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups, both for how they work internally and the products they can build. OpenAI offered to invest $2M in tokens into every startup in the current yc batch," Altman wrote in a post on X. What is tokenmaxxing? Altman described the initiative as a push toward tokenmaxxing, a growing tech industry trend where startups and engineers maximise the use of AI models and credits to speed up product development and internal workflows. Tokens are the basic units of text that large language models (LLMs), including OpenAI's GPT models, process and generate. Per OpenAI, in English, one token is roughly equal to four characters or about three-fourths of a word. According to a report by The Information, startups could gain access to nearly one trillion GPT-5 tokens under the deal, though actual usage costs vary depending on the model and the extent of cached or repeated inputs. Categories include input tokens (text sent to the model), output tokens (text generated by the model), cached tokens (reused conversation history), and reasoning tokens, which some advanced models use internally while thinking through a response before producing the final answer. What will startups give up in exchange for tokens? YC general partner Tyler Bosmeny said startups will exchange equity for OpenAI tokens. According to The Information, these tokens will be offered through a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) agreement, under which OpenAI's ownership stake will be determined in a future funding round. "@sama just offered $2M in OpenAI tokens to EVERY YC startup in the current batch in exchange for equity. Just like [angel investor] Yuri Milner offering to invest in every startup back when Sam was a YC partner. I can't wait to see what's unlocked when you let the most driven, creative and formidable founders tokenmaxx," Bosmeny wrote in a post on X. In 2011, Milner and SV Angel offered $150,000 in convertible loans to the then YC cohort of 40 startups. The initiative is expected to cover hundreds of YC startups in its spring and summer cohorts. The startup accelerator is currently running its Spring 2026 batch between April and June, which, per its website, includes nearly 168 startups, of which around 40 have publicly launched. At the same time, the accelerator is accepting applications for its Summer 2026 funding cycle, with the programme scheduled to run from July to September in San Francisco. While the current Spring 2026 YC cohort does not include any Indian startups, during its first visit to India, the startup accelerator distributed free API tokens, compute power, and developer tool credits worth about $25,000 (roughly Rs 21 lakh) to 2,000 selected participants. However, ET reported on Wednesday that several participants who had little immediate use for the credits reportedly began selling them at discounts of 20-40%, creating a grey market for AI credits. Some attendees also said certain credits came with restrictions or did not function as expected, prompting them to sell.