Every time you use ChatGPT or Claude, you wait. Usually 3 to 8 seconds. That's it. That's the idea. uwait is a Chrome extension that shows a curated ad during that loading screen. You get a small cut. The publishers whose content trained the AI get a cut too. The advertiser gets your attention at a moment when you're actually paying attention. The split: 50% to users, 30% to publishers, 20% to us. We're picky about advertisers. Just brands that make sense in that context.
I built uwait because I got tired of staring at a loading screen every time I asked ChatGPT something.
That's it. That's the whole origin story.
Three seconds. Five seconds. Sometimes more. Multiplied by every query I do in a day, every day. At some point I thought, that's a lot of attention going nowhere. And attention is worth something.
So I built a Chrome extension that shows a small ad during that wait. You earn from it. Publishers whose content trained the AI you're using earn from it too. We take 20%.
No account to create. No surveys. No referral schemes. You install it, use AI like you normally would, and money accumulates in the background.
I've been running it myself for a few weeks now. It's not life-changing money. But it's real money, for time you were already spending doing nothing.
The extension is live at uwait.co. There are already a few advertisers running so you'll actually see ads from day one.
Curious what you think. Happy to answer anything below.
The wait was already there. You just put it to work.
The 50/30/20 split is unusually honest too.
How do you match which publishers content trained which model, or is that more approximated?
The idea is really interesting and the fact that you aiming to be picky about advertisers is great. Do you already have some standards/ rules for them?
I think this is a pretty interesting idea. You noticed a small thing that millions of people do every day and found a way to make that time useful. My main question would be whether people care enough about the money to keep using it after the first few weeks. When someone checks their earnings after a month, do they feel like it was worth installing?
Okay I had to laugh because I'm literally waiting for Claude right now while writing this. Premise is sharp.
How do you prevent this from turning over time into one of those 'wait for the ad to finish' experiences like on YouTube? As soon as advertisers realize that users are paying attention, they usually push for longer spots.
Gotta admit, "get paid to stare at the spinner" is a sentence that has no business working as well as it does. My only real worry is the ad sneaking in at the exact moment my brain's still chewing on the answer - but if it stays in the dead-air gap, honestly, sure, take my idle seconds.
Fun idea, congrats on the launch!
Very interesting! I wonder if this will make people overuse tools like chatgpt/claude
@tberguer loved the idea. just a question like how is it surfaced to users? Is it a full-screen ad or something more lightweight? When the AI is thinking, I usually spend that time reviewing my prompt or previous responses, so I'm curious how you make it non-intrusive and also do you give payment like in some kind of token or you have your own money system which use can later cash-out ?
Love the concept. It's one of the most creative AI monetization ideas I've seen recently.
My main question is around advertiser economics rather than user earnings.
If I understand correctly, advertisers are bidding primarily for access to a high-value audience (developers, researchers, knowledge workers, etc.) rather than prompt-level targeting.
In that case, what kind of CPMs do you expect to sustain long-term, and what evidence suggests advertisers will consistently pay enough to make the economics work for all three parties (users, sources, and uwait)?
The idea is compelling, but it seems like the entire model depends on advertisers seeing strong enough ROI from these "AI wait-time" impressions compared to traditional channels like Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, or developer-focused sponsorships.
Curious how you're thinking about that side of the marketplace.
monetizing the loading screen is one of those ideas where you hear it and think "why didn't anyone do this already." the 50/30/20 split with publishers getting a cut is a smart way to address the "AI trained on our content" argument too. curious how you keep the ad quality high at scale though because the moment it starts feeling spammy the whole value prop falls apart
What's the point of showing ads while users are waiting for an AI response ? It feels like a distraction for me.
Getting paid while AI spins is the most 2026 thing I’ve read all week. Cheeky and genuinely clever.
This is one of the more unusual ideas I’ve seen here. I like the observation that AI waiting time is basically unused attention. Everyone who uses ChatGPT or Claude a lot knows those few seconds add up, especially during a busy day. The revenue split is also interesting, especially the publisher part. I’m curious how you decide which publishers should get paid from a given interaction, since AI training data and attribution can get very messy very quickly.
My main question is about the user experience: how do you make sure the ads stay lightweight enough that they don’t make AI tools feel more distracting or noisy over time?
About uwait on Product Hunt
“Get paid while AI thinks”
uwait launched on Product Hunt on June 22nd, 2026 and earned 150 upvotes and 29 comments, placing #7 on the daily leaderboard. Every time you use ChatGPT or Claude, you wait. Usually 3 to 8 seconds. That's it. That's the idea. uwait is a Chrome extension that shows a curated ad during that loading screen. You get a small cut. The publishers whose content trained the AI get a cut too. The advertiser gets your attention at a moment when you're actually paying attention. The split: 50% to users, 30% to publishers, 20% to us. We're picky about advertisers. Just brands that make sense in that context.
uwait was featured in Advertising (29.7k followers), Artificial Intelligence (471.6k followers) and Search (18k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 109k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted uwait?
uwait was hunted by Tristan Berguer. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how uwait stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Tristan Berguer
Hey Product Hunt, Tristan here.
I built uwait because I got tired of staring at a loading screen every time I asked ChatGPT something.
That's it. That's the whole origin story.
Three seconds. Five seconds. Sometimes more. Multiplied by every query I do in a day, every day. At some point I thought, that's a lot of attention going nowhere. And attention is worth something.
So I built a Chrome extension that shows a small ad during that wait. You earn from it. Publishers whose content trained the AI you're using earn from it too. We take 20%.
No account to create. No surveys. No referral schemes. You install it, use AI like you normally would, and money accumulates in the background.
I've been running it myself for a few weeks now. It's not life-changing money. But it's real money, for time you were already spending doing nothing.
The extension is live at uwait.co. There are already a few advertisers running so you'll actually see ads from day one.
Curious what you think. Happy to answer anything below.