Garry Tan spends up to $200K yearly on AI tokens
TechCrunch: Y Combinator’s Garry Tan uses AI agents so much, he spends up to $200K a year on tokens
Y Combinator Garry Tan has jokingly admitted that he's suffered from "cyber psychosis” and barely sleeps sometimes because he’s so excited to be working with his AI agents. On a new episode of Walter Isaacson’s podcast, The Builders, Tan put a price tag on his passion.
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Y Combinator's CEO spends between $100,000 and $200,000 annually on tokens to power AI agents that he uses extensively for work projects, coding tasks, and personal life management, including reading his email, files, and notes. He describes AI agents as autonomous assistants that can help with daily tasks and has created a set of 23 Claude Code skills to share with others on GitHub. For AI agents to become mainstream, costs need to decrease significantly, as he acknowledges his spending level represents a privilege not available to most people. He also advocates for personal AI agents that users control and program themselves rather than free agents controlled by large technology companies.
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