Howie Liu's Founding 500: $10M for AI Agent Startups

Howie Liu is backing founders building AI agent companies through a new initiative called Founding 500. This program offers $10 million in credits to people creating autonomous software businesses. Liu, the co-founder of Airtable, is specifically targeting 500 founders building "agent-first" startups. These credits, amounting to $20,000 per founder, are designed to support companies building proactive agents that can run workflows and improve through use. This initiative is seen as an infrastructure subsidy, addressing the significant early cost of running AI agents. It provides a structured on-ramp for early builders in the rapidly evolving AI agent space. This support helps founders cover inference costs, which can be a major expense before revenue generation.