AI Pulse · Under the Radar

There’s a piece making the rounds on Hacker News that maps out something most business owners have never thought about, a grey market for stolen AI credits. It hit the front page with 155 points and 60 comments in a few hours, which tells you plenty of people recognized what it was describing.

The short version is this. Somewhere out there, people are getting access to stolen or pooled logins for Claude and Codex, then reselling that access through card dealers, account pools, and relay panels, at 94 to 98 percent off official pricing. If that discount range holds up, it means someone could be running real production workloads on API credits that were never legitimately paid for, and doing it at a fraction of the normal cost.

Why should you care if you’re just trying to run a business, not a hacking ring? Two reasons. First, if your team or a vendor is using AI tools priced suspiciously cheap, it’s worth asking where that access actually comes from. Underground supply chains don’t come with warranties, and accounts built on stolen credentials can vanish overnight, taking your workflow with them. Second, this is a signal about how valuable AI API access has become. When something is worth stealing and reselling at scale, with dedicated dealers and panels built around it, that’s a sign the underlying resource matters more than most people assumed a year ago.

The report itself is being treated as a developing investigation rather than settled fact, so treat the specific numbers as reported, not verified. Still, it’s a useful reminder to keep your own AI access clean, tracked, and tied to accounts you actually control. That kind of visibility into who’s using what, and how, is the kind of thing we build into an AI command centre, so nothing shady ends up quietly running through your business without you knowing.