The accelerator's two-day conference at the Warriors' arena drew 6,000 attendees, 3x last year's crowd, as Altman, Huang and other AI leaders shared advice and free credits.
Y Combinator packed the Chase Center with 6,000 aspiring founders this weekend, three times the headcount of last year's Startup School. The accelerator's two-day conference for technical entrepreneurs filled the Golden State Warriors' home court with orange branding, breakout sessions, and a parade of AI executives.
Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Anthropic's Boris Cherny were among the speakers. Meta's Alexandr Wang and Google's Jeff Dean also took the stage. Attendees described standing ovations and packed sidelines where they listened through light-up headphones to separate the noise of a stadium.
The freebies matched the scale. Cherny told the crowd everyone would get six months of Anthropic's $200 Claude Max plan. Wang offered $1,000 in Meta credits. Altman had already offered YC founders tokens for equity two months ago, he said during his session.
Not everyone loved the spectacle. OpenAI's Bill Chen wrote on X that the event gave "megachurch vibes." Jay Kapoor, a general partner at VSC Ventures, called it "a megachurch for people who only worship money." YC Partner Tyler Bosmeny replied: "New York City finance bro says what?"
Spellbook cofounder Scott Stevenson said the grandness felt like an abandonment of YC's original ethos. "The YC brand felt like it was designed to filter out status chasers," he wrote. "You can feel the herd rushing into an overflowing barn. A stadium sized barn."
YC general partner Christopher Golda pushed back. He wrote that the accelerator's goal was never "scarcity" and defended the size. "There are far more people who can, should, and will be in the arena," Golda said. "So yeah, we rented out an arena."
YC leaders said the event also included about 100 parallel small-group sessions and an ML research symposium. The accelerator helped people outside the Bay Area with travel support. One attendee flagged a potential TSA problem with the portable battery YC gave out, joking it looked like an explosive device.
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