At a Y Combinator event on Tuesday evening, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made an unexpected announcement. He offered to provide each startup in this year's program with $2 million worth of OpenAI tokens in exchange for company equity. This means that instead of cash, OpenAI is investing AI resources necessary for building their products. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .
According to the Y Combinator directory, there are approximately 169 startups in this batch. It is not yet clear how much equity each startup will provide for this deal. This will depend on the valuation of the startup's first official investment round (Series A). Y Combinator Managing Director Jared Friedman noted that this deal will be structured as an "uncapped SAFE," meaning there will be no valuation cap on the company.
This strategy is expected to be mutually beneficial for OpenAI. First, the company becomes a shareholder in promising startups. Second, it ties new projects into its own ecosystem. This ensures that startups do not migrate to competitor platforms like Anthropic.
Experts believe that as the cost of AI services decreases, the tokens OpenAI is providing today could become very cheap for the company in the future. In return, the equity stakes obtained are highly likely to appreciate significantly over time.
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