Y Combinator's Garry Tan spends up to $200K a year on AI tokens

An agent that knows everything

His use goes well beyond work research. Tan says his agent has read all of his email and Dropbox, and all of his Apple Notes, including therapy notes going back 20 years. He likens it to a "Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder" that knows him, runs ahead with suggestions and helps him "see around corners."

As an early OpenClaw adopter and now a power user, he argues that agents should not be treated like traditional software. Some people, he says, worry so much about repeatability and safety that they give up the best parts of working with an agent, which can resemble a human collaborator.

Inside Y Combinator, an internal agent called Stray Light has a personality and a "company brain," with the full context of every founder the accelerator has backed, everyone who has emailed it and all applications, according to Tan.

Cost is the barrier

Tan expects personal AI agents to become mainstream, but only if costs fall. "It's too expensive right now," he said, acknowledging that his spending is "a crazy privilege that not everyone can do."

He is also wary of free agents controlled by Big Tech. Pointing to Meta's control over its algorithm, he said many people wish it did not hold that power, and suggested a future in which people run a personal AI that they control and program themselves.