Long gone are the days of tech bros wearing basic logo T-shirts and sweatshirts to work. A new trend is sweeping Silicon Valley, and The New York Times calls it “corpcore.”

Technology juggernauts OpenAI, Anthropic and Palantir are adopting this trend by creating stylish branded merchandise with “niche designers and sold in limited-edition drops.”

Many of these items are designed with luxury in mind – prices range from $15 for a pair of bright blue crew socks from OpenAI to $239 for a blue chore coat from Palantir that has earned its fair share of headlines and social media buzz.

More and more, there has been this value around aesthetics and quality and care and craft.”

Thais Castello Branco

Founder, Taste Labs

“Historically, it was cool to signal that you didn’t care,” Thais Castello Branco, founder of AI startup Taste Labs, told The New York Times. “More and more, there has been this value around aesthetics and quality and care and craft.”

It’s All About Taste

To stand out in the crowded AI marketplace, tech firms have bolstered their marketing efforts with billboards, Hollywood-style launch videos and, of course, eye-catching branded merch.

For example, OpenAI launched its online store Supply Co. last month. The e-commerce outlet features shirts, outerwear, headwear, a tote bag, water bottle and even a ChatGPT-branded basketball. All of which are currently sold out.

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Anthropic has hosted pop-up cafés in which visitors who showed the Claude app received free coffee and baseball caps embroidered with “thinking.” These hats became highly sought after on eBay, currently going for $50 each.  

These items and experiences represent a larger shift within the tech industry to focus on taste and style. With AI increasingly being used for design and creation, The New York Times suggests that consumers’ main job now is to distinguish what is good and bad.

“There are a judgment and a taste involved in choosing [merch] that’s the best,” Jesse Dwyer, head of communications and marketing at AI startup Perplexity, told The New York Times, referring to the apparel, drinkware, notepads and other merch available at its online store.

There are a judgment and a taste involved in choosing [merch] that’s the best.”

Jesse Dwyer

Head of Communications & Marketing, Perplexity

Eve Bouffard, head of design at startup accelerator Y Combinator, urged senior leadership to lean into the upscale merch trend because “it felt like someone sat down and thought about it a little bit,” she told The New York Times. As a result, Y Combinator upgraded from heather-gray T-shirts emblazoned with its slogan to custom journals.