OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered to invest $2 million worth of OpenAI tokens into every startup in the current Y Combinator cohort in exchange for equity, during a Y Combinator event on Tuesday, May 20, 2026. YC partner Tyler Bosmeny described the moment as a “mic drop moment.”
The current Y Combinator class includes approximately 169 startups. Rather than a cash investment, each startup would receive an allotment of AI tokens it can use to build its products. The deal will be structured as an “uncapped SAFE,” according to YC Managing Director Jared Friedman, meaning it will convert at the startup’s next priced round — typically a Series A — without a ceiling on the valuation. The higher the valuation at conversion, the smaller the equity stake OpenAI receives.
For OpenAI, the arrangement serves two purposes: it gains equity positions across a broad set of early-stage companies, and it steers those startups toward building on OpenAI’s platform rather than defaulting to competitors. As inference costs continue to fall, the tokens OpenAI is committing today may cost it significantly less to produce in the future, potentially making the equity it receives in return relatively inexpensive.
The deal has drawn mixed reactions. Supporters argue it removes one of the largest cost burdens for early-stage startups — AI infrastructure spending — at a stage when cash is scarce. Critics, including seed investor Jason Calacanis, have warned that giving OpenAI an equity stake could expose startups to the risk of having their ideas studied and replicated within OpenAI’s own product offerings.
The core trade-off for founders is whether an allocation of tokens from a single AI provider justifies surrendering additional equity. Y Combinator already takes a 7% stake in exchange for a $500,000 cash investment. Startups also rely on equity to compensate early employees and attract seed investors, who commonly take around 20%. A key risk is that a startup could exhaust its token budget before achieving meaningful results, having given up equity in the process.
Source: TechCrunch