January 16, 2026·by Ankit Gupta

This year, YC has partnered with nearly two dozen companies to offer students who attend YC events a suite of free credits for AI devtools.

The YC AI Stack includes over $20,000 in cloud credits on Azure and AWS, over $5,000 in credits for GPT/Claude/Grok, and generous credits for AI devtools in voice, browser automation, web search, video generation, databases, web crawling, and more. We’re especially happy that 14 YC companies are represented in this starter pack.

We would love to see students use these to experiment with the latest AI tools without worrying about paying for them out of pocket. Many of the best ideas are built on top of these technologies. For example, you could build a market research tool using Firecrawl and Exa, a voice assistant using Vapi and Browser Use, or a legal aide using Reducto and Gumloop.

At the moment, students who attend a YC university event starting in Fall 2025 are eligible to redeem a deal. You will receive an email shortly after your eligible event confirming your access to the program. We’re excited to work with our partners to continue rolling this out to more students in the upcoming year. Looking forward to seeing what you all build with this.