Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, has previously humorously acknowledged experiencing what he terms “cyber psychosis,” revealing that his enthusiasm for collaborating with AI agents often leads to sleepless nights. In a forthcoming episode of Walter Isaacson’s podcast, The Builders, scheduled for release on Tuesday, Tan quantified his investment in this passion. “I spend about maybe $100,000 to $200,000 a year on tokens,” he disclosed to Isaacson. He employs these agents for a multitude of work-related projects and coding tasks, and has generously made available his collection of 23 Claude Code skills, known as gstack, on GitHub, aiming to educate others on the capabilities of AI agents.
On one hand, Tan utilizes his agent similarly to how many individuals engage with AI: to assist in researching topics related to Isaacson’s podcast and preparing for potential questions. Conversely, his agent also plays a significant role in managing his personal life. “It’s read all of my email and all of my Dropbox. It’s read, like, all of my Apple Notes, even my therapy notes going back 20 years,” he explained. He characterizes the use of AI agents as a means of receiving assistance with “almost anything that you do in your day-to-day life, and for it to do it somewhat more autonomously. Think of it as a Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder at all times. Like, almost anything you want to do, it knows you, and it’s there to help. And it will actually sort of run ahead and say, ‘What about this?’ Or it’ll help you see around corners.”
As an early adopter of OpenClaw who has now become a proficient user, Tan emphasizes the importance of not regarding AI agents as conventional software. He noted that some individuals are so preoccupied with “repeatability and safety” that they inadvertently sacrifice the remarkable aspects of interacting with an AI agent, which can closely resemble human interaction. For example, Y Combinator is also employing an agent that is “rebuilding the way we operate at YC,” he remarked. “We now have an internal AI agent, for instance, named Stray Light that kind of has a personality, and then it has a company brain. Like it actually has the total context of every founder we’ve ever backed, anyone who’s ever emailed us, like all the applications.”
Tan, who is inherently a technology enthusiast—an expectation for anyone leading Silicon Valley’s renowned startup accelerator—believes that personal AI agents will ultimately gain widespread acceptance, provided a significant challenge is addressed: the reduction of costs. “It’s too expensive right now,” he stated, acknowledging that the financial commitment he makes towards AI agents represents “a crazy privilege that not everyone can do.” However, he also expressed skepticism regarding free agents managed by major tech companies. Reflecting on the future he envisions for technology and the influence of Meta as a social media entity, he commented, “This is a huge company that controls the algorithm, and we all wish that they didn’t at some level. So you could imagine a personal AI that you control, that you program.”
