YC AI Student Starter Pack

Overview

The YC AI Student Starter Pack 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.

YC does not publish per-provider amounts, credit expiry dates or a program end date on the announcement page.

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.

How to Get Started

1. Attend an eligible YC university event. YC states "You will receive an email shortly after your eligible event confirming your access to the program."
2. Go to the deal page at deals.ycombinator.com/students and sign in with a Hacker News account.
3. Claim each partner deal individually; every partner runs its own redemption flow and may apply its own terms, including separate credit expiries.