Y Combinator President Spends $200,000 a Year on AI Agent Tokens

Garry Tan, president of Y Combinator (the startup accelerator), said on Walter Isaacson's podcast The Builders that he spends $100,000 to $200,000 a year on tokens. A token is the unit AI models use to charge for usage. He spends that money running AI agents built on Claude Code, Anthropic's coding tool. He calls this spending "a wild privilege not everyone can afford." One of his agents read through all of his email, his Dropbox files, and his Apple Notes. That included his therapy notes going back 20 years.

Tan also posted a set of 23 skills for Claude Code on GitHub, the code-collaboration site. Skills are ready-made instructions that teach an agent how to do a specific task. He released the set, called gstack, for free. He says personal AI agents will not go mainstream until this level of spending becomes affordable for more people. For now, letting an agent this deep into your personal life is a privilege reserved for those who can pay for it.