# Prized

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/prized/ · added 2026-11-12 · updated 2026-11-12

**In short.** Prized (Cloud computers and sandboxes for AI coding agents, United States): Self-serve paid plans live, November 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 2 founders named; Y Combinator's directory lists a team of 3. Launched 30 July 2026; still running.

Cloud computers and sandboxes for AI coding agents · United States · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Developer tools and coding agents

- Outcome: Self-serve paid plans live, November 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: 30 July 2026; months from launch to the outcome: 3
- Team: 2 founders named; Y Combinator's directory lists a team of 3
- Outside funding: Y Combinator, Summer 2026 batch; amount not found
- Main factor: Own problem
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Running, B2B, Developer tools

Links:

- Visit prized.dev: https://prized.dev/

**The product.** A cloud computer for AI coding agents. A developer rents a box, a virtual machine in the cloud, and runs Claude Code or Codex on it. The agent keeps working after the laptop closes, and the box's ports open on the laptop as localhost. A second product, Sandboxes, starts short-lived microVMs through an API.

**Why it worked.** The founders built it for a problem they had: a coding agent stops when the laptop lid closes. The company's launch post on the Y Combinator page says they built it for themselves. The first product, a builder of internal tools for office staff, was on sale in July 2026. The pages show the box product by 25 August 2026.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Prized sells cloud computers for coding agents. A coding agent is a program, such as Claude Code or Codex, that writes and tests software on its own for hours. Prized rents the developer a box, a virtual machine that runs in the cloud and stays on when the laptop is off. Files sync both ways with a folder on the laptop, and the box's ports appear on localhost.

Marinos Eliades and Hudson Griffith are the founders. Y Combinator's company page lists them as co-founders and gives the batch as Summer 2026, "Founded: 2026" and a team of 3. The first product, launched on Hacker News on 30 July 2026, let office staff build internal tools with AI. By 25 August 2026 the company's blog describes the dev box.

No revenue figure was found, so this story is grade E, and no source says that a customer has paid. The evidence is a public price list on Prized's pricing page. Its terms say plans renew automatically and Stripe processes payments.

## Why did Prized work?

### The founders built it to fix their own laptop problem

The founders' launch post on Y Combinator's page says they built Prized for themselves, after getting tired of keeping their laptops open. In the post, a raw virtual machine kept the process alive but gave up the local workflow they wanted. The same page says both worked together at an earlier company, Gander, before they started Prized.

### A plan turns into credit that boxes spend by the second

The pricing page says a plan lands as credit and boxes spend it by the second. Asleep, a box pays only for its storage. The page also says unused credit rolls over for up to two months of the plan. This is a usage price with a monthly plan, not a fixed price per machine.

### The company changed its product within weeks

The pages show an internal-tools builder on 31 July 2026 and a dev box for coding agents on 25 August 2026. The sources do not say why the company changed. They show only the two dated states of the company's pages.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages. They are grade C.

- A command line program installs with one shell command and sets up a box: `curl -fsSL https://prized.dev/install.sh | sh`, as the home page shows.
- Each agent runs in a tmux session on the box, a terminal program that keeps a session alive when the connection drops. The home page says closing the lid does not stop it.
- Sandboxes are Linux microVMs, small virtual machines, that code starts through an API or a command line, as the Sandboxes page says.
- The privacy policy lists its sub-processors: Amazon Web Services, Neon, Vercel, PostHog, Sentry, Cloudflare, Stripe, Anthropic, Google and GitHub.
- The home page says API keys stay off the box. The agent sees a placeholder. The box swaps in the real key on HTTPS requests to hosts the user allows.

Sources: [1, 4, 5, 12]

## Who tried this before Prized, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups built developer tools that lived in the cloud or used AI to write code. The values below are from that database, read on 12 November 2026, and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Nitrous.io (2012 to 2016; funding US$8.0M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Instant cloud development environments, a 'code anywhere' editor with no local setup.
- Why it died: The record says it was squeezed between AWS Cloud9, which Amazon could give away to sell computing, and GitHub's bundled tools.
- Record: 

### Kite (2014 to 2024; funding US$21.0M; cause: Monetization)

- Promise: AI code completion inside the editor, with a free tier and a paid Pro plan.
- Why it died: The record says it was too early to a market that later grew, and that it made monetization mistakes. The page cuts the rest of its text off.
- Record: 

### Fig (2020 to 2024; funding US$2.4M; cause: Monetization)

- Promise: A terminal with autocomplete for command line tools and shared team scripts.
- Why it died: The record calls it a unit economics and monetization problem, not a product-market fit problem.
- Record: 

## What changed

Each of the three sold a developer tool that a larger company could add to its own platform. The record on Nitrous.io names Amazon and GitHub. Prized sits on the same kind of ground: AWS, GitHub and the makers of the coding agents sell cloud environments and agents too. The company's own blog compares itself with GitHub Codespaces, Codex Cloud and Claude Code on the web.

Two things differ from Nitrous.io. First, the product is built for coding agents that run for hours, a use that did not exist in 2012. Second, the terms say users must follow the agent makers' own terms, including limits on running their tools on cloud machines. A rule change by those makers is a risk the predecessors did not have.

## Can one person copy Prized now?

**Verdict: The idea can be copied; the lead is hard to copy.**

A small team can sell cloud machines for coding agents. The pages show a company with two named founders doing it, with a price list and a self-serve plan. Larger cloud companies are the problem: the company's own blog names several competitors that sell similar boxes.

1. Start from a problem you have yourself, as the founders say they did.
2. Publish every size and price, as the pricing page does, with the hourly rate and the monthly plan.
3. Meter by the second and carry unused credit over, so a user who is away pays little.
4. Keep secrets off the machine: the agent sees a placeholder, not the key.

**What is still open.** Hosting for the next kind of agent: computer-use agents, evaluation harnesses and long-running scheduled jobs.

## How much revenue does Prized make? The numbers, graded

A price list and billing terms, but no revenue figure. Every row comes from the company's own pages or a Y Combinator page

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch on Hacker News | 30 July 2026, as "Launch HN: Prized (YC S26)" | C | The post is by user marinoseliades, and the item's timestamp reads 2026-07-30. It describes the internal-tools product, not the box product. | [6] |
| Founders | Marinos Eliades and Hudson Griffith | C | The company blog post of 25 August 2026 is signed "Hudson Griffith & Marinos Eliades, cofounders of Prized". Y Combinator's page lists both as founders. | [8, 7] |
| Team size | 3, per Y Combinator's directory | C | Y Combinator's company page says "Team Size: 3". Only the two founders are named on it. The size on 12 November 2026 was not checked. | [7] |
| Start of the company | 2026 | C | Y Combinator's page says "Founded: 2026", Summer 2026 batch. The earliest Internet Archive copy of prized.dev is dated 14 July 2026. The terms name "Prized Inc., a Delaware corporation". | [7, 10, 3] |
| First product | A builder of internal tools for non-engineer staff | C | The Hacker News title is "Let non-engineer staff build secure internal tools". The Internet Archive copy of the home page of 31 July 2026 reads "Build internal tools with AI. Safely." | [6, 9] |
| Prices of the first product, July 2026 | Free plan with 2 builds a month; Teams plan at US$100 a month per workspace | C | The company's pricing page as the Internet Archive saved it on 30 July 2026. The founders' launch post gives the same Teams price. | [11, 6] |
| Current product | Cloud boxes for coding agents, and Sandboxes in beta | C | The home page title is "Cloud computers for AI agents". The company's blog dates the Sandboxes beta post 14 October 2026. | [1, 12] |
| Micro box price | US$12 a month at 8 hours a day | C | Stated on the company's pricing page: 2 vCPU, 4 GB memory, 80 GB disk. The same page lists US$25 a month around the clock. | [2] |
| Billing terms | Plans renew automatically; payments go through Stripe | C | Terms of service effective 2 November 2026: "Plans renew automatically each billing cycle until cancelled" and "Payments are processed by Stripe". | [3] |
| Customers named | none | C | The home page and the pricing page name no customer. The launch post speaks of unnamed customers of the first product. | [1, 2, 6] |
| Funding | Y Combinator, Summer 2026; amount not found | C | The company's blog post of 25 August 2026 says "Prized is now backed by Y Combinator". No source gives an amount. | [8, 7] |
| Time from launch to the November 2026 page check | 3 months | calc | Calculated: 30 July 2026 to 12 November 2026, 105 days. | [6, 2] |

How to read this table. Grade C means the company or a founder said it on a page read in November 2026. Grade X is calculated on this page. No row is a revenue figure.

## Pricing

Prized box prices on 12 November 2026, from the company's pricing page (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano, 8 hours a day |  | 5 | 2 vCPU, 2 GB memory, 40 GB disk |
| Micro, 8 hours a day |  | 12 | 2 vCPU, 4 GB memory, 80 GB disk |
| Extra Small, 8 hours a day |  | 24 | 2 vCPU, 8 GB memory, 150 GB disk |
| Small, 8 hours a day |  | 48 | 4 vCPU, 16 GB memory, 300 GB disk |
| Medium, 8 hours a day |  | 108 | 8 vCPU, 32 GB memory, 500 GB disk |
| Large, 8 hours a day |  | 215 | 16 vCPU, 64 GB memory, 1 TB disk |
| Extra Large, 8 hours a day |  | 431 | 32 vCPU, 128 GB memory, 2 TB disk |

Each price is a plan per month for a box used 8 hours a day. Around the clock, the same page lists US$10 for Nano, US$25 for Micro and US$50 for Extra Small. It lists US$100 for Small, US$250 for Medium, US$500 for Large and US$1,000 for Extra Large. A plan lands as credit from US$10 to US$1,000 a month, and the page says boxes spend it by the second. New accounts get US$30 of credit with no card. Sandboxes bill by the second, from US$0.066 an hour at 1 vCPU and 2 GB.

## When did Prized launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a first product for office staff to cloud computers for coding agents, in about three months.

- **14 July 2026** (grade C [10]): The earliest Internet Archive copy of prized.dev. It describes a tool for building internal tools with AI, and its button reads "Schedule a call".
- **30 July 2026** (grade C [6, 11]): Launch HN for the internal-tools product. The post says it is live and self-serve, with a free plan and a Teams plan.
- **25 August 2026** (grade C [8]): The company's blog says Prized is backed by Y Combinator and describes a dev box that stays on when the laptop closes.
- **14 October 2026** (grade C [12]): The company's blog announces Sandboxes in beta: Linux microVMs that code starts through an API or a command line.
- **2 to 6 November 2026** (grade C [13]): The changelog lists a launch week: infinite storage, GPU boxes in beta on paid plans, and Python and TypeScript SDKs for sandboxes.
- **12 November 2026** (grade C [2]): The pricing page lists seven box sizes from US$5 to US$431 a month at 8 hours a day.

## What could go wrong for Prized?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure was found on the company's pages, the Hacker News post, the Y Combinator page or the blog. A press search was not possible on the day. No source states that a customer has paid. The launch post says that most of one unnamed customer's company uses the first product, and that is the founders' own statement. A reader could look for a Stripe-verified profile or a named customer.
- **The product changed within weeks.** The Hacker News launch on 30 July 2026 and the Internet Archive copy of 31 July 2026 describe an internal-tools builder. The blog of 25 August 2026 describes a dev box. The internal-tools product still has its own page at tools.prized.dev, with its own terms. No source says how many customers each product has.
- **Comparisons and a promotion are the company's own.** The home page shows a Y Combinator badge and an 'All systems operational' line. It also carries a banner, 'Leaving Conductor Cloud? Move before Nov 13'. The pricing page compares a Small box at US$48 with US$66 to US$126 elsewhere. It says the company checked those list prices from 17 August to 2 September 2026. The Y Combinator page confirms the badge. No outside source checks the rest. The home page also shows a strip of logos of tools the box works with, such as Cursor and VS Code. It presents them as compatible tools, not as customers.
- **It runs other companies' agents under their terms.** The terms say users are responsible for the agent makers' terms, including limits on running their tools on cloud machines. The terms also say backups are the user's job and that Sandboxes and anything labelled beta come with no uptime commitment.

## Sources

1. Prized home page, prized.dev — https://prized.dev/ (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the product description, the install command, the price list and the banner.
2. Prized pricing page, prized.dev/pricing — https://prized.dev/pricing (grade C). Read in full on 12 November 2026. Source for the box prices, the credit plans and the Sandboxes rates.
3. Prized Terms of Service, effective 2 November 2026 — https://prized.dev/terms (grade C). Read in full. Source for the company name, billing, Stripe, beta features and the agent makers' terms.
4. Prized Privacy Policy — https://prized.dev/privacy (grade C). Read in full. Source for the list of sub-processors and for the age limit of 18.
5. Prized docs: Billing — https://prized.dev/docs/billing (grade C). Read the sections on plans, credit and free credit. Source for the plan range of US$10 to US$1,000 a month.
6. Launch HN: Prized (YC S26), Hacker News item 49109721 — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49109721 (grade C). Read in full, with the founders' replies. Source for the launch date, the first product and its plans.
7. Y Combinator company page: Prized — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/prized (grade C). Read in full. Source for the founders, the batch, the founding year, the team size and the founders' launch post.
8. Prized blog, 25 August 2026: Prized is now backed by Y Combinator — https://prized.dev/blog/backed-by-y-combinator (grade C). Read in full. Source for the signed names of the two founders and the dev box description.
9. Prized home page, Internet Archive copy of 31 July 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260731211917/https://prized.dev/ (grade C). Read the text of the page. Source for the first product's headline.
10. Prized home page, Internet Archive copy of 14 July 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260714224121/https://prized.dev/ (grade C). Read the first lines. This is the earliest copy the Internet Archive lists for prized.dev.
11. Prized pricing page, Internet Archive copy of 30 July 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260730135520/https://prized.dev/pricing (grade C). Read in full. Source for the first product's free plan, the Teams plan and the Stripe checkout.
12. Prized Sandboxes page, blog post of 14 October 2026 and blog index — https://prized.dev/sandboxes (grade C). Read the three pages. The blog index dates the post and describes the posts that compare Prized with competitors. Source for the sandbox description and rates.
13. Prized changelog, docs page — https://prized.dev/docs/changelog (grade C). Read the entries from 22 October to 11 November 2026. Source for the launch week of 2 November.
14. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Record pages read on the website on 12 November 2026. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Prized? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Prized).