Y Combinator Application Answers
Company Description (50 characters)
Wallet + login layer for AI tools
One-Line Description
Stripe + OAuth for AI apps (wallet + budgets + consent)
What does your company do?
Problem: Developers keep re-building auth + billing + usage tracking + budgets for every AI app. End users can't see or control their AI spend/consent across tools and providers.
Solution: AI Wallet is a cross-app wallet + login layer for AI tools. It sits above OpenRouter/Vercel as a neutral identity, budget, and consent layer – not another router. Users get one wallet and budgets across apps; developers drop in a <Login with AI Wallet> button + SDK instead of building billing/governance from scratch.
How far along are you?
Pre-MVP. In the last week I finalized the MVP spec and architecture (wallet, budgets, consent receipts on top of OpenRouter/Vercel). In the last 3 days I built a working 'Login with AI Wallet' demo app: users log in via AI Wallet, get a prepaid demo balance, talk to multiple LLMs through OpenRouter, and see their balance decrease + basic usage receipts per call.
Do you have users?
No revenue yet. Current traction is: interest from developers and teams at GITEX, a short list of 3–5 indie AI apps we're targeting as design partners, and a fully-scoped MVP with a clear plan to integrate with one gateway (OpenRouter) first.
Success for the next 2–3 months = 3–5 apps integrated, 50+ users with wallets, and $1k+ of prepaid credits flowing through AI Wallet.
Why you?
I'm a solo founder but have been obsessively mapping the product, architecture, and go-to-market. I'm optimizing for speed over committee. The 3-day wallet demo and the depth of the internal wiki show how I work: decide fast, document well, and build.
YC would help me (a) find the right technical cofounder when it's clearly time, and (b) plug into customers and infra partners.
What will you do with the money / next 3-6 months?
Months 0–2: Make this demo "real" – proper auth, real Stripe credits, OpenRouter wired into your policy edge.
Months 2–4: 3–5 design partners live, pricing experiments.
Months 4–6: Add Vercel gateway support + simple directory/"Works with AI Wallet" listing.
YC Specific Metrics: - 3–5 indie AI apps integrated - 50+ wallet users - $1k+ top-up volume - Demo conversion rate: 60%+ from login to first chat - Cross-app retention: 40%+ users return within 7 days
What do you understand about your business that others don't?
AI Wallet isn't just billing infrastructure – we're the interface-agnostic identity and governance layer that becomes increasingly valuable as agentic AI explodes. While competitors focus on single surfaces (chat apps, browsers, enterprise suites), we understand that the real opportunity spans chat, web, native apps, kiosks, and NFC hardware through one unified SDK.
We see that users don't just want consolidated billing—they need cross-app memory, global safety budgets, and consent receipts that work regardless of interface. Developers don't just want routing—they need built-in monetization, distribution, and trust frameworks that work across multiple AI providers and payment rails.
The critical insight: AI Wallet is the neutral implementation layer for emerging agentic commerce standards (Stripe ACP, Google AP2, ACK protocols) that provides developers with a single SDK instead of forcing them to read multiple protocol specifications. We own the "batteries-included wallet implementation" while others own the underlying protocols and rails.
Source: competitor-analysis-09nov.md lines 197-223
Video Script (60 seconds)
0–10s (Problem): Screen recording of someone juggling multiple AI tabs/APIs. "Developers keep re-building billing and budgets for every AI app. Users can't see what they're spending or where their data goes."
10–35s (Solution + Demo): Show sample app with Login with AI Wallet → wallet modal → back to chat app. Send message; highlight balance going down and usage receipt appearing. Switch model dropdown from one to another (OpenRouter multi-model), show same wallet budget being used.
35–50s (What this really is): "This is a neutral wallet + login layer above OpenRouter and Vercel – we're not a router. Developers drop in our SDK; users get one wallet and clear budgets across apps."
50–60s (Traction + Plan): "I'm a solo founder; this demo went from spec to working in 3 days. Next, I'm integrating this with 3–5 indie AI apps and pushing $1k+ through the wallet in the next couple of months."
Competitive Differentiation
Direct Infrastructure Competitors: OpenRouter, Portkey, LiteLLM are strong infra partners but focus on routing, not end-user identity or cross-app wallets. We position as "the wallet on top of gateways" – they handle model routing, we handle users and money.
Consumer Superapps: Poe and Perplexity have massive user bases but are interface-bound (chat/search only). Our edge: interface-agnostic support for browsers, kiosks, NFC, IoT plus neutral infrastructure vs their vertical integration.
Agentic Wallet Players: Synergy, Nuggets, Inrupt share our "agentic wallet" narrative but lack our hardware deployment (NFC/kiosks) and developer monetization focus. We execute on IoT/NFC while they focus on software-only solutions.
Enterprise Platforms: Lark, Notion, M365 handle internal AI budgets but are vendor-specific. We're the vendor-neutral org wallet that works across multiple tools and external apps.
Source: competitor-analysis-09nov.md lines 41-181
Target Market
Starting with indie AI developers and small AI tool companies who need to ship faster and provide better user experience than building auth/billing from scratch.
How will you get users?
Developer-First Distribution: Launch AI Wallet SDKs (wallet.js, wallet.py) with immediate usability, plus an AI coding agent integrated with MCP/Claude that supports repo-level integration - "talk to your repo and add AI Wallet in minutes."
Content & Community: Short YouTube tutorials (5-10 mins) showing integration, targeted influencer marketing to AI/dev YouTubers, and technical blogging on HN/Dev.to to drive organic developer adoption.
Open Source & Hackathons: Run "AI Wallet Challenge" online hackathons with bounties, contribute AI Wallet login to LangChain/Haystack/LlamaIndex, and provide open source templates for common use cases.
Phased Rollout: Months 1-2 focus on SDK launch and tutorials, Month 3 launches coding agent and first hackathon, Month 4 pushes influencer marketing for >1k GitHub stars, Months 5-6 scale partnerships with LangChain and educational bootcamps.
Source: distribution_strategy.md lines 10-27, 68-72
How do or will you make money?
Revenue Streams: - Transaction Fees: Percentage on top of underlying AI provider costs - Platform Subscription: Tiered pricing for volume, SLA guarantees, and enterprise support - Marketplace Commissions: Revenue share from third-party vendor sales - Value-Added Services: Custom analytics, compliance audits, and fine-tuning orchestration
Go-to-Market Strategy: Partner with leading model providers to co-develop turnkey integrations, target developer communities via open-source SDKs and hackathons, offer free usage credits to enterprises to pilot multi-model routing, and build strategic alliances with data marketplaces to seed the partner ecosystem.
Source: AI Wallet_ A Next-Generation Infrastructure for AI.md lines 50-63
Why Now? (Market Timing)
Perfect storm of market forces: AI infrastructure spending reaching \$375B in 2025 (projected \$500B by 2026), authentication crisis with 68% of users citing "login fatigue" as top adoption barrier, developer pain points with 87% struggling with API key security and surprise bills, and 90% losing 19-50% productivity to tool fragmentation. AI Wallet provides the unified infrastructure layer this scaling ecosystem desperately needs.
How big can this be? (Market Size)
TAM: \$182B AI infrastructure market (2025) - all spending on AI compute, cloud, and services SAM: \$48B addressable slice (IAM \$22.9B + AI Platforms \$18.2B + API Management \$6.9B) SOM: \$5M → \$480M (0.01%–1% of SAM over 3-5 years depending on enterprise adoption and developer traction)
Source: AI Wallet_ A Next-Generation Infrastructure for AI.md lines 108-117
Extended Company Description (Whitepaper Version)
AI Wallet: A Next-Generation Infrastructure for AI Services
An AI Wallet serves as a unified, secure, and extensible infrastructure layer—akin to "Stripe-for-AI"—that enables developers, enterprises, and end users to onboard, manage, and transact across multiple AI models, data providers, and identity systems, all through a single standardized API and interface.
Core Value Proposition: - Unified Billing & Settlement: Consolidated invoicing, usage tracking, and payouts across diverse AI providers - Plug-and-Play Integrations: Standard adapters for leading model providers and data marketplaces - Identity & Access Management: End-user identity, usage permissions, and entitlement controls via OAuth/OIDC - Developer Experience: One SDK and dashboard to configure, test, and monitor AI calls across providers - Monetization & Revenue Sharing: Flexible pricing models and automated partner revenue splits
Source: AI Wallet_ A Next-Generation Infrastructure for AI.md lines 3-17
Sources: - Source: yc-071125-chatgpt+.md lines 32-83, 170-189 - Source: AI Wallet_ A Next-Generation Infrastructure for AI.md lines 3-17, 50-63, 95-119 - Related: MVP Specifications, YC Strategy