Allowance (YC P26)

The future of payments is here. I'm here to make it easy and safe. 🤖🚀

@dasmersingh 🍪📨

Cookie stuffing should only be reserved for the bakery. Be one of the first hundred orders placed on Allowance this weekend and you'll also get a free box of cookies shipped to your door. useallowance.com/real-cookies-n…

Our only cookie stuffing happens at the bakery. 🍪 The first 100 people to complete a purchase with Allowance this weekend get a free box of cookies shipped to their door. No hidden tabs. No swapped codes. Just actual cookies. useallowance.com/real-cookies-n…

An example use case: "Every Monday, analyze my LinkedIn & YouTube history. Find a niche product under $20 that I haven't reviewed. Buy it with Allowance. Create a short review video, publish it, and call me with last week's analytics and this week's pick." Use it now here: chat.dev/share/recipe/n…

Allowance is now a first-party connector on chat.dev, a platform for running Codex and Claude agents in the cloud 24/7. This means agents on chat.dev can securely request purchase approval, receive one-time agentic virtual cards, and complete purchases without ever having to open your laptop. Huge shoutout to @mmirman for building an awesome product!

Allowance is now an official @claudeai connector! Giving Claude the ability to securely make purchases has never been easier ⚡️ Connect it now.

If you're in NYC and still searching for your green flag this summer, just look up :)

Ordering makeup @ColourPopCo has never been easier 🪄💅 Download Allowance now and get your agent ordering for you: apps.apple.com/us/app/allowan…

@gamefandave @factual1215 @mil000 @mil000 @factual1215 if you give us a shot, would love to get your thoughts!

@factual1215 @mil000 @useallowance Yeah I use Privacy for it

Has anyone ever done or seen a “Agentic AI agent” use a credit card to buy anything without the original user directly asking it to? I’ve never seen it.

@1997harkirat @ycombinator appreciate the shoutout @1997harkirat

spent the last week deep in @ycombinator 's P26 batch. figured out some patterns across 192 companies. here's what the data says: 1/ team sizes 61% of p26 is 2 founders. 19% is solo. 18% is 3 people. only 4-5 companies have 4+ founders. AI made building smaller. median team in this batch is a pair, not a squad. 2/ who's actually getting in @shreyansj (@manicule : 18. just finished high school. was a founding engineer at Supermemory. @akkkkiira (@ArgaLabs ): skipped high school. finished university at 19. then quant at Goldman. then SDE at Stripe. now building sandboxes for AI agents. @johnbachm (@mountinsure ): started his first company at 18. now building insurance for AI agents. @adisingh (@agentmail): 21. built a Rust IDE from scratch. processed 8 billion tokens. the entry bar used to be "ivy league degree + 5 years at Google." it's now "finished high school." 3/ the founder backgrounds a neurosurgeon: @sparkcpark, trained at U Washington. solo founder. building the OS for clinical AI imaging (Lattice Health). the designer of the iPhone 17 Pro body: @michaelblhssn, Apple hardware for a decade. now building a wearable that reads your emotions (@anoria_inc ). a NASA guy who tracked asteroids: Gregoire Chomette - MIT aeroastro. worked on asteroid threat systems at NASA. now building underwater drones (AICE). the co-founder of Zepto: @alitabba_ - built KiranaKart which became Zepto. then joined BlackRock. now building an AI finance agent (Gravy). a med school dropout: Tane Kim, left med school to build AI patient tools (@FramewiseHealth). 4/ 9 founders came from trading desks @oscar_lvy (@river_markets): ran models at BlackRock managing $6B. then Sandbar ($2B). now building prime brokerage for prediction markets. Jeremie Cohen (@kelaicapital): ran a global systematic equity book at WorldQuant. led ML at Millennium. now building AI for market research. @jackzumwalt (@KimptonAI ): ran his own quant firm. now building the IDE for investors. Theodore Otzenberger (armature): ex-Palantir, Polytechnique. now building observability for AI agents. the path: trading desks → yc. 5/ two ex-pro gamers are now building AI infrastructure @hanghuang_ (@insforge ): pro League of Legends player. then Amazon PM. then Yale MBA. now building cloud infra for AI agents. Akira Tong (@ArgaLabs ): pro competitive gamer. skipped high school. quant at Goldman. SDE at Stripe. now building sandboxes for agents. 6/ which industries are actually being targeted developer tools + infra: 40 companies (21%) manufacturing + industrial: 27 companies (14%) finance + fintech: 22 companies (11%) healthcare: 20 companies (10%) sales + marketing: 15 companies (8%) defense: 6 companies (3%) recruiting: 4 companies (2%) legal + compliance: 3 companies (2%) government: 1 company (0.5%) industries with zero companies: farming, edtech, climate, media, transport, retail. yc's summer 2026 wishlist explicitly asked for farming/agriculture AI. nobody in p26 built it. 7/ the two things yc is building at once 7.1 - plumbing for AI agents: tools that agents need to actually work. phone numbers (@AgentPhoneHQ ), permission layers (@clawvisor ), payment cards (@useallowance ), shared memory (@memorydotstore ), browsers (@StableBrowse ), safe databases (@ArdentAI ), messaging between agents (@primitive by @itsjustemail )... 7.2- agents doing real jobs (~55 companies): @revnu_app (by @artfreebrey & @GeorgeJeffersn) replaces your growth team. @trymemoir_ai (by @MaanavA51108 & @ZhanJason179) replaces your CMO. @manicule replaces your DevRel. @StandardSignal replaces your fund traders. Arden replaces your SOX audit team. @lab0_ai ( by @onkar_borade_10, @tokenaware , and @SujaySriv ) replaces your forward-deployed engineers. @walterindustry replaces your manufacturing manager. Foaster replaces your strategy consultants. the ratio: for every 2 companies building AI workers, 1.4 companies are building what those workers need to function. 8/ the university numbers 18 founders mention Stanford. MIT: 10. Oxford: 5. Berkeley: 4. but 4 Stanford/MIT founders left before they finished their degree this batch. Joshua Wang: Stanford dropout. top 250 in the US in math (USAMO). first intern at Perplexity. @sudiprokaya (@laminalabs ): MIT CS + Math , on leave. building Lamina Labs. universities are one of the pipeline's into yc, not a ticket to get in. the ones staying are there for the network. the ones leaving figured out the return on time is higher elsewhere. /end

Allowance: the spend-control layer for AI agents. Generates scoped, one-time card credentials so an agent can shop, order food, or book travel for you, without ever touching your real card number. You approve every purchase from your phone. useallowance.com @useallowance

This week, Allowance launched Chat tab. Describe what you want to buy, and an AI agent can complete the purchase for you—with spend limits, merchant controls, and approvals built in. No Mac Mini, MCP or OpenClaw setup required. Agentic commerce is becoming easier than ever ⚡️

Just a few weeks ago, @OpenAI launched GPT Realtime Whisper, its frontier low-latency speech-to-text model. With today's update, GPT Realtime Whisper powers voice commerce in @useallowance. Talk to an AI. It buys for you. The dawn of conversational commerce is here. ⚡

@dasmersingh @MordiShadpour *Unless you specifically ask me to. Please refer to our privacy policy on useallowance.com for details.

@MordiShadpour @useallowance Like a good barista, @useallowance never forgets your order :)

Introducing Chat tab: Make purchases immediately by talking to an AI agent in Allowance Chat. You can always still connect via CLI or MCP if you want to connect @useallowance to Codex, OpenClaw or your favorite desktop agent. Skip the fric, use Allowance. apps.apple.com/us/app/allowan…

@dasmersingh 🫡 Ready to chat

Just saw a @SpaceX ad for the Starship Torch and 20 seconds later @useallowance bought it for me through the new in-app chat 🚀 With AI agents making impulse purchases this easy, I'm gonna need parental controls for myself now 😅

@dasmersingh @RobinhoodApp one-time card credentials and credit card rewards for your AI agents, at your service ⚡️

@RobinhoodApp If you're still on the Gold Card waitlist, but want your AI agents to securely shop for you with your existing credit cards now, get @useallowance. useallowance.com

Your Robinhood Gold Card, now agent-ready. Link your card to your agent, set spending rules, and securely shop with AI assistance. Now available. robinhood.com/creditcard/ Terms Apply. A $50 annual Robinhood Gold subscription is required.

@dasmersingh @vladtenev Download now: useallowance.com

@dasmersingh @vladtenev 100%. You'll still earn your credit card rewards but with our one-time generated card numbers for each purchase your real card number is never shared. Btw we support CLI and MCP, so setup is a breeze.

Quick update on agents: Agentic Trading is still rolling out. If you see an error, access is coming soon. Agentic Credit Cards are live for everyone now.

@IshmohanSingh @ycombinator @dasmersingh Glad I can save you time as you stay in control

@ycombinator @useallowance @dasmersingh This is the solution I was waiting for as I would waste my time browsing over the apps This would save that time and still get me the most competitive price

Allowance (@useallowance) lets AI agents safely make purchases using one-time virtual cards with built-in guardrails for things like travel booking, price tracking, reservations, and e-commerce checkout. Congrats on the launch, @dasmersingh! ycombinator.com/launches/QS4-a…