B2B companies, or their VCs for that matter, aren’t exactly considered style icons. That hasn’t stopped them from producing so 👏 much 👏 swag.

I worked in VC during what I consider to be the heyday of tech swag. I’ve received more ill-fitting corporate tees than I can count. I have so many logo-covered socks that new ones go straight to the trash. If you look in my closet, you’ll see three navy blue Patagonia fleeces, each emblazoned with a corporate logo.

Things got so out of hand that Patagonia stopped adding corporate logos to its products in 2021. RIP (briefly), the tech (and finance) bro uniform we love to ridicule.

But Patagonia didn’t kill tech swag. If anything, swag somehow got cool again, and it’s more ambitious than ever. (Say what?!)

Meta’s Muse recently teased a merch store on X and the post racked up 500,000 views.

Duolingo launched a capsule collection during New York Fashion Week (this was pretty funny). An exclusive Codex hoodie is listed on eBay for $2,000. PostHog dropped new merch including a dangerously-skip-permissions macro pad that quickly sold out. The examples keep piling up.

As we enter peak conference season, I’ll unpack why swag got cool again and why tech companies want to be the next lifestyle brands.

No company better exemplifies how much swag has changed than TBPN, the media company that OpenAI acquired in April 2026 in a deal reportedly worth “low hundreds of millions.”

TBPN merch is so in demand and hard to acquire that there’s at least one fake merch store devoted to knock-offs. You can’t make this up.

Despite the obvious organic demand for TBPN merch, they’ve never (to my knowledge) sold it directly to fans.

Instead TBPN reserves specialty pieces for VIP audiences like their sponsors and high-profile friends. Receiving TBPN merch – which is usually emblazoned with the logos of other tech companies – signals the recipient was chosen and has special insider status.

This didn’t happen by accident.

TBPN partners with a specialty menswear designer, Sebastian Moraga of SRM, to create bespoke brand apparel. Sebastian formerly co-founded a DTC apparel brand called No Maintenance and now works on a referral basis with some of the fastest-growing tech startups. SRM intentionally has no social media presence, and clients hire SRM to bring the physical side of their businesses to life.

Sebastian doesn’t use the word “merch” with clients. He described his approach as “building an apparel brand with the client, rather than filling a merch order.”

He starts with the founder’s taste, asking about their influences, even if they aren’t fashion-related. A preference for a style, or even a reference like Dune, can be enough to start developing ideas. From there he spends a week or two looking at editorial and vintage references, then develops ideas as a coordinated capsule rather than a collection of logo-bearing items.

TBPN’s apparel was inspired by a Red Bull racing jacket. You might notice Formula 1 references throughout; this comes directly from TBPN host Jordi’s longstanding love of motorsport, Sebastian said. “My colleague, who worked with TBPN before I did, developed the initial racing pieces around that personal interest, bringing something to life that hadn’t been done in tech before.”

Racing is pretty much the polar opposite of recording a podcast, but the opposites seem to reinforce each other. It doesn’t hurt that F1 is perhaps the most-loved sport among influential tech execs.

The apparel started as a way to give back to sponsors. The most recent round of jackets has grown to 30 logos.

Its green color matches TBPN’s studio branding, although Sebastian told me that TBPN is expanding to complementary colors now that the brand is established. “The items as seen being worn by Jordi throughout the year are not limited to green, but include colors like black, cream, and white.” (In apparel, black is often a best-selling color.)

Tech companies don’t have the same retail margin pressure as apparel brands, so they can splurge for some of the highest-quality materials available. The loss is relatively immaterial, especially compared to hosting an exec dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant or sponsoring a trade show.

“The goal is to blur the line between merchandise and independently desirable clothing. We fabricate goods from scratch with factories in the USA and Japan that also work with brands such as Celine, The Row, and Auralee.”

What matters is that the right people actually wear the apparel. Sebastian’s test: would someone choose to buy and wear this themselves?

TBPN isn’t the only tech company using merch (sorry, brand apparel) as a status symbol.

OpenAI launched their first merch store, called Supply Co., in July. The New York Times even wrote about the drop.

Most of the items in the store are sold out, and this seems intentional. Artificial scarcity makes these items feel more artisanal and exclusive.

OpenAI is catching up to Palantir, which might be the most prolific merch creator. The company sells its merch in limited-release drops with only 300 to 1,000 of each item. Items reportedly sell out within 15 minutes.

Palantir goes for a utilitarian workwear aesthetic. All items are made in the US. The clothing presents Palantir not as some scary AI company, but as a lifestyle brand.

You might notice that very few items actually say Palantir. They might include a minimalist logo, like the black logo on a black hat. Or they’ll say PLTR, the ticker symbol. The brand is implied rather than stated.

Anduril, the defense tech company, has a similar playbook anchored by exclusive collaborations with brands like NASCAR.

What these merch playbooks have in common:

TBPN’s racing shirts and Anthropic’s Thinking cap are in massive demand precisely because almost nothing is available.

TBPN is a live video podcast, but the merch is F1 gear. Palantir’s merch is American-made workwear. Anduril’s is NASCAR-themed. The merch is about what the brand is meant to represent.

Love or hate the merch, you can tell that it was made with intention and attention to detail. Items should feel like they were made for a specific person with a specific life.

To be clear, TBPN, OpenAI, Palantir, and Anduril are outliers when it comes to apparel. Most of tech merch is still pretty generic: t-shirts and hoodies with logos slapped in front.

But it’s worth watching these outliers to see where things are heading (and why).

AI made it easy to mass-produce slop. The latest merch wave is designed to be anti-slop: it’s exclusive, one-of-a-kind, has a POV, and is luxury-coded.

The New York Times links this to the latest obsession with taste. That’s part of the story.

The bigger motivation: it’s become nearly impossible to earn or sustain an audience’s attention, as I wrote about earlier.

When products become commodities, brand identities take on more of the work. We’ll pay more for VOSS water than for Kirkland Signature, even if most of us couldn’t taste the difference. What we’re paying for is trust, status, quality, and the experience around the product.

Joher Khan, co-founder of startup merch agency PLUMSODA, made the point that tech companies have very limited space to express themselves digitally. They need to look for different outlets to express their creativity and what their brand stands for, and physical products are one of the few surface areas that haven't been disrupted.

Joher’s advice for startups is to ask themselves: if your brand were a fashion style, what would it be? Would it be preppy, streetwear, quiet luxury, or something else? Start there, then explore different garments, cuts, and qualities to express your brand.

He recommends starting with an easy-to-wear piece and a piece with a strong POV. The latter will have a smaller audience, but can shape your brand much more than a simple t-shirt or hoodie. “You can put a limited run out in the world, take some photos of it to show it off, and now you’re giving your brand texture and a point of view,” Joher told me.

Many tech companies can afford to invest more in the craft of marketing if it allows them to stand out from the crowd. This applies to events, social media posts, launch videos, and now merch.

Hiring a fashion designer costs far less than a mid-level engineer, and probably isn’t a full-time role. The production runs don’t need to be large since scarcity is a feature rather than a constraint. And there are bespoke agencies that can provide access to specialty materials not easily available online.

Now I’m left wondering, which fashion style would Growth Unhinged be? Please send help.

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