Y Combinator’s Garry Tan uses AI agents so much, he spends up to $200K a year on tokens

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan revealed on Walter Isaacson’s podcast The Builders that he spends approximately $100,000 to $200,000 per year on AI tokens, reflecting his heavy use of AI agents for countless work projects and coding tasks. He has shared 23 Claude Code skills called gstack on GitHub to help others learn what agents can do. Tan uses his agent for research and podcast prep, but also to manage his life: it has read all his email, Dropbox, Apple Notes, and even therapy notes going back 20 years. He describes AI agents as a "Jiminy Cricket" on your shoulder that knows you and helps autonomously. As an early OpenClaw adopter, he advises not treating AI agents like traditional software, warning that overemphasis on repeatability and safety can sacrifice the benefits of working with an agent that can be similar to a human. Y Combinator also uses an internal AI agent named Stray Light that has a personality and a "company brain" with total context of every founder ever backed and all applications. Tan believes personal AI agents will become mainstream once costs come down, acknowledging his spending is a "crazy privilege." He also cautions against freebie agents controlled by Big Tech, suggesting instead a personal AI that users control and program.

(Source：TechCrunch)