During Tuesday night's Y Combinator event, Sam Altman had what YC partner Tyler Bosmeny called a “mic drop moment.” Altman provided $2 million worth of OpenAI tokens to all startups in the current class in exchange for startup equity.
In other words, he promised that OpenAI would invest across the class, not with cash, but with an allocation of AI tokens that startups could use to build their products.
I'm excited to see what happens with the tokenmaxxing startup both in terms of how it works internally and the products they can build.
openai offered to invest $2 million in tokens into all startups in the current YC batch.
Happy building! https://t.co/YSHYJoutuf
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 20, 2026
According to Y Combinator's directory, the group includes around 169 startups.
How much equity each startup can expect to part with cannot be determined at the time the deal is signed. It depends on how much the startup is worth when it raises its first pricing round, a funding round where investors assign a formal valuation to the company.
Y Combinator managing director Jared Friedman told TechCrunch that the deal will be offered as an “uncapped SAFE,” meaning it will “convert at the next price round, typically a Series A.”
SAFE is YC's standard contract structure for early-stage companies raising capital before an initial “pricing” round with valuation. Uncapped SAFEs have no cap on valuation, which benefits founders because the higher the valuation at the time of conversion, the less of a portion of the company the investor receives.
I've seen some discussion around X that the deal could result in OpenAI having about a 2% stake if the startup reaches a $100 million valuation, but I can't confirm that without seeing the actual terms.
For OpenAI, this deal works on two levels. Obviously, the company can take a stake in this early-stage company and make a profit if it's successful. But it also encourages you to build your business on or using OpenAI. Whether or not this locks them in long-term, it means they won't default to OpenAI competitors like Anthropic's Claude Code.
The token itself could potentially make trading even more lucrative. As inference costs continue to fall, what OpenAI is delivering today may cost next to nothing to produce tomorrow, making the stock it receives in return look increasingly cheap.
Of course, there is already a lot of commentary on X as to why this is not a good deal for startups.
Proponents of the deal believe it will help reduce the cost of AI infrastructure, one of the biggest costs for startups. The cost of AI infrastructure can quickly add up and consume a disproportionate share of an early-stage startup's budget, at a time when funding is typically already scarce.
There's another caveat for those who beware buyers. Seed investor Jason Calacanis, who owns competing accelerators and funds, warned that he fears Big Tech.
“Once you have these tokens, there is a non-zero chance that OpenAI will study exactly what your startup is doing, copy your ideas, and include your app in a free offering. This is a classic platform strategy – founders, beware!” he posted.
The fear that OpenAI and Anthropic will swallow up all the good ideas from AI startups is real.
The truth is, if OpenAI wants to make it happen, it can, even if the startup simply pays OpenAI for tokens. By taking a stake, OpenAI may be able to get more, not less, incentives for startups to succeed.
Additionally, as the former head of Y Combinator and a regular guest speaker, Altman has as much access as he wants to any group and its ideas, deal-making or not.
The bigger question for this YC batch is whether the token budget from a single AI player is worth giving up additional equity. Y Combinator has already acquired a 7% stake for a $500,000 cash investment in a standard deal. In return, startups will gain access to YC's powerful Silicon Valley network of VCs, potential customers, and other founders.
But stock is also valuable for startups. Seed investors often get around 20% as well. And startups need equity to reward early employees.
An even bigger danger is that startups give up capital in the process and exhaust their OpenAI token budget without sufficient evidence. Still, it may be better at that stage than paying for the tokens with cash, an even more scarce resource.
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