OpenAI and Anthropic are burning cash to win the compute war

openai and anthropic are offering yc startups up to $500k in credits, with some founders reporting competing offers exceeding $3m. this strategy aims to lock early-stage companies into specific ecosystems, countering pressure to improve margins ahead of planned ipos. with four cohorts of roughly 200 companies annually, the two labs could distribute $800m in combined credits. google, microsoft, and aws are similarly leveraging free compute and model access to secure long-term loyalty.