YC AI Student Starter Pack
Students attending a YC university event get over $25,000 in free AI credits
What you get from YC AI Student Starter Pack for free
Overview
The YC AI Student Starter Pack, now branded the YC AI Stack, is a bundle of free credits from Y Combinator and "nearly two dozen companies" for students who attend a YC university event. YC announced it in January 2026 and says it is "rolling this out to more students in the upcoming year".
Free Tier Quotas & Limits
The official announcement groups the value as follows:
- Over $20,000 in cloud credits on Azure and AWS, usable for compute, storage, managed AI services and model hosting.
- Over $5,000 in credits for GPT, Claude and Grok (OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI model APIs).
- Credits from 14 YC-backed AI devtool companies covering voice AI, browser automation, web search, video generation, document parsing, workflow automation and databases. Named partners include Firecrawl, Exa, Vapi, Browser Use, Reducto and Gumloop; the remaining partners are not individually named.
- Combined value is over $25,000.
The deal page lists $10,000 AWS, $10,000 Azure, $1,000 OpenAI and $500 Anthropic credits and says "Your access lasts for one year from the date of the qualifying event"; devtool partner amounts and a program end date are not published.
How to Get Started
- Attend an eligible YC university event. YC states "You will receive an email shortly after your eligible event confirming your access to the program."
- Go to the deal page at deals.ycombinator.com/students and sign in with a Hacker News account.
- Claim each partner deal individually; every partner runs its own redemption flow and may apply its own terms, including separate credit expiries.
Before you claim
- Student status: Attend a YC university event (starting Fall 2025)
- Verification: Receive the confirmation email after the event
- Verification: Sign in with the same Hacker News account used to RSVP
- Verification: Redeem each deal individually
- Who can claim: Students who attend a YC university event starting Fall 2025; eligibility is auto-detected via the Hacker News account used to RSVP.
- Payment card: Not needed.
- Account: Sign up with the provider.
Key limits
- Must attend a YC university event (Fall 2025 onward)
- Access lasts one year from the qualifying event
- Each deal must be redeemed individually via a Hacker News account
Eligibility
- Open to "students who attend a YC university event starting in Fall 2025".
- Attendance is in person; YC describes no online-only redemption path.
- No startup, company or funding requirement is mentioned.
As the provider states it on the date shown above. The provider decides who qualifies.
Not eligible? 3 alternatives open to everyone
This offer is only for students. These offers have no student, startup, nonprofit or country requirement.
- Anthropic Academy free courses — Free AI courses from AnthropicAnthropic · Verified · No card
- Anyscale $100 Free Signup Credit — $100 in Anyscale credits for CPU and GPU compute on Ray, no cardauthkit.anyscale.com · Verified · No card
- Hetzner Community Tutorial Credits — Up to EUR 50 in Hetzner Cloud credit per accepted community tutorialgithub.com · Verified · No card
Check everything you qualify for — five questions, no signup.
History
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- Terms updatedby a person · Content updated from https://deals.ycombinator.com/students (checked 2026-10-21).
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Full history with screenshots · How we verified this offer · Sitewide changelog
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