Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan spends up to $200,000 annually on AI tokens

Garry Tan, the president and CEO of Y Combinator, revealed that he spends between $100,000 and $200,000 per year on AI tokens. These tokens represent usage credits for large language models, which Tan utilizes extensively for coding tasks, research, and personal organization.

Tan describes his intensive use of AI agents as “tokenmaxxing,” a strategy aimed at allowing small teams or individuals to achieve the output typically expected of much larger organizations. He uses agents to manage various aspects of his life, including reading emails, Dropbox files, and personal notes to provide autonomous assistance.

To assist others in understanding the capabilities of AI agents, Tan has open-sourced a toolkit called “gstack” on GitHub. This collection includes 23 Claude Code skills designed to demonstrate role-based agent capabilities. Additionally, Tan noted that Y Combinator is implementing internal AI agents, such as “Stray Light,” to manage institutional knowledge regarding the founders the accelerator has backed.