{"id":50834,"date":"2026-05-20T18:31:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/sam-altman-has-a-proposition-for-startup-founders-ai-tokens-for-equity\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T18:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:31:25","slug":"sam-altman-has-a-proposition-for-startup-founders-ai-tokens-for-equity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/sam-altman-has-a-proposition-for-startup-founders-ai-tokens-for-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman has a proposition for startup founders: AI tokens for equity"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a0db4a2ce0a5b2f12d7db3e?format=jpeg\" alt=\"OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pictured.\"\/><figcaption>Sam Altman said that OpenAI will offer Y Combinator&#039;s current batch an equity-for-tokens deal.<\/p>\n<p>Tayfun Coskun\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>OpenAI offered $2 million in tokens in exchange for equity in the current class of Y Combinator-backed startups.<\/li>\n<li>Sam Altman wrote on X that he was &quot;excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups.&quot;<\/li>\n<li>It&#039;s another sign of how AI has changed the economics of building a company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Before some startup founders raise their Series A, they&#039;ll be raising AI tokens.<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a new offer for Y Combinator&#039;s current batch of founders: fork over some equity, and OpenAI will offer up $2 million in API tokens. YC general partner Tyler Bosmeny called it a &quot;mic drop moment.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I am excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups, both for how they work internally and the products they can build,&quot; Altman wrote on X. &quot;Happy building!&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The pilot program will be available for spring and summer 2026 batches of the Y Combinator startup accelerator, according to a person familiar with the offering.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A mic drop moment @ycombinator tonight@sama just offered $2M in OpenAI tokens to EVERY YC startup in the current batch in exchange for equity<br \/>Just like Yuri Milner offering to invest in every startup back when Sam was a YC partner<br \/>I can&#039;t wait to see what&#039;s unlocked when you\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/5KlRA2lNGj<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Tyler Bosmeny (@bosmeny) May 20, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The person familiar with the offering said that participating startups will sign an uncapped Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or SAFE, agreement. That means OpenAI&#039;s eventual ownership stake would be determined in a future financing round, rather than being fixed upfront.<\/p>\n<p>The SAFE will not include a Most Favored Nation, or MFN, provision, the person said. In other words, if a startup later issues another SAFE with better terms, OpenAI would not automatically receive those terms. By contrast, the $375,000 uncapped SAFE in Y Combinator&#039;s standard deal does include an MFN provision.<\/p>\n<p>The accelerator&#039;s startups often already score steep token discounts. The partners do, too; Ankit Gupta wrote on X that &quot;one of the clutch perks of being a partner at YC is having unlimited budget to spend on tokens.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Not all were fans of the deal. Investor and &quot;All-In&quot; cohost Jason Calacanis told founders to &quot;be careful,&quot; warning that OpenAI could one day incorporate a startup&#039;s idea into their own product. Y Combinator did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>Roshan Kumaraswamy, who founded the YC-backed startup Apten, responded to Calacanis: &quot;The startups are buying openai tokens anyways&#8230;&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Altman&#039;s deal is a twist on traditional investing \u2014 and yet another sign of how AI is changing startup economics.<\/p>\n<p>Tokens are a measurement of computing that help determine bills for AI usage, such as operating an AI coding agent or processing a chatbot conversation. While many new companies are now running with leaner teams, they&#039;re racking up high token bills in the process.<\/p>\n<p>Y Combinator incentivized this change. In a recent episode of the accelerator&#039;s &quot;Startup School&quot; series, partner Diana Hu advised founders to embrace tokenmaxxing over headcountmaxxing.(Translation: spend your budget on AI tokens, not new employees.)<\/p>\n<p>Altman himself has a long history of funding startups, especially through Y Combinator. He served as the accelerator&#039;s president from 2014 to 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Some of Altman&#039;s investments came up during his trial with Elon Musk. His stake in Helion Energy, for example, was worth more than $1.6 billion as of the end of 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The Y Combinator deal will run through OpenAI, rather than Altman personally, per his X post.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam Altman said that OpenAI will offer Y Combinator&#039;s current batch an equity-for-tokens deal. Tayfun Coskun\/Anadolu via Getty Images OpenAI offered $2 million in tokens in exchange for equity in the current class of Y Combinator-backed startups. Sam Altman wrote on X that he was &quot;excited to see what will happen with tokenmaxxing startups.&quot; It&#039;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}