AI & cloud credits for startups

The Google for Startups Cloud Program has a Start tier (up to $2,000 in Google Cloud credits valid for one year) for startups planning to raise, and a Scale tier for VC-funded startups (up to $200,000 over two years: 100% of usage up to $100,000 in Year 1 and 20% of usage up to another $100,000 in Year 2). AI-first startups in the Scale tier can receive up to $350,000, with Year 1 covering 100% of usage up to $250,000. Members also get Google Skills training credits and Google Workspace Business Plus free for 12 months for new signups, and Scale members get support credits, Google Maps Platform credits and a Startup Success Manager. Credits cover Google models such as Gemini and Gemma; third-party models in Model Garden are billed directly.

Cloudflare for Startups offers three credit tiers: $10k for bootstrapped or self-funded startups that raised under $1M, $100k for startups that raised under $5M from an affiliated partner, and $350k for startups that raised $5M or more from an affiliated partner. Credits cover usage-based developer products such as Workers, Workers AI, R2 and D1, with product caps for R2 and Workers AI. Core security and network features (three Enterprise domains, DDoS, WAF, CDN and DNS) are free at every tier. Credits last one year or until used, with no extensions.

AWS Activate offers promotional credits in two main tiers: Activate Founders for bootstrapped or self-funded startups (starting at $1,000, up to $5,000 for select participants) and Activate Portfolio for pre-Series B startups backed by an Activate Provider such as a VC, accelerator or angel group (up to $200,000). An invite-only 'AWS Credits for AI Startups' tier offers $200,000+ for startups scaling beyond Portfolio. AWS says credits cover more than 200 eligible services, including Amazon Bedrock and third-party models on Bedrock, and usually expire within one to two years depending on the package.

Databricks relaunched its startup program on June 16, 2026. Qualifying startups can get up to $200K in credits across Databricks and Neon (the serverless Postgres company Databricks bought in 2025) through a single application, plus hands-on technical guidance, community access and go-to-market support. It targets early-stage, venture-backed startups building on data and AI, especially those that recently raised pre-seed to Series A funding.

Microsoft for Startups (formerly marketed as Founders Hub) gives startups Azure credits that grow from a starter amount to as much as $150,000. Without an investor code you get $200 after verifying with a personal LinkedIn account. With a 10-character Investor Network referral code you get $1,000 straight away and may unlock bigger benefits sooner. After that, credits rise through published milestones ($5,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $150,000) based on business verification and sustained use of Azure.

The Together AI Startup Accelerator is a selection-based program for AI-native startups, launched on October 15, 2025. Your tier depends on how much you have raised: Build (up to $5M raised) gets up to $15K in platform credits and 3 hours of forward-deployed engineering, Scale ($5M–$10M) gets up to $30K and 6 hours, and Grow (over $10M) gets up to $50K and 10 hours. Credits cover serverless inference, dedicated endpoints, fine-tuning and instant clusters, but not Reserved GPU Clusters. Members also get go-to-market support, events and VC introductions.

Notion for Startups gives eligible startups the Notion Business plan, including Notion AI, free for up to 6 months, worth up to $12,000 for a 100-person team. The length depends on your route: 6 months if you're affiliated with one of Notion's startup partners, 3 months if you have a valid business website and company-domain email, and 1 month for companies under 10 employees, SMBs, service businesses, or applicants Notion can't verify as startups.

The ElevenLabs Grants Program gives eligible startups 12 months of free access to the full ElevenLabs platform on a grant version of the Scale plan, with 33 million characters of credits. ElevenLabs says that's over 680 hours of Agents usage and more than $5,500 in value. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis with no deadline, and decisions come within about a week.

Lambda offers qualifying AI researchers up to $5,000 in cloud credits to develop and showcase their work on Lambda Instances. Select research may be featured on Lambda's website. The grant launched in December 2024 with rolling applications. It is a research grant, not a startup program, and Lambda does not publish detailed eligibility criteria.

NVIDIA Inception is a free program for AI startups: no application, membership or equity fees. Members get NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute training credits, access to free cloud credits from NVIDIA and partners, preferred pricing on select NVIDIA hardware and software (paid as rebates through suppliers), and introductions to investors through the NVIDIA VC Alliance. There are no cohorts or deadlines, and NVIDIA doesn't publish a fixed credit amount.

Modal for Startups gives new Modal customers a one-time grant of free compute credits, plus access to Modal's engineers, go-to-market help and a founder community. The Seed to Series A tier is for startups that raised any amount from a fund in Modal's VC partner network, or more than $1M from any fund. A custom Scaling and Series B+ tier serves AI-native companies that raised more than $30M or are post-Series B and have a partner-network VC. Modal does not publish fixed credit amounts.

HubSpot for Startups discounts net-new Professional or Enterprise HubSpot products for eligible startups. Startups that raised Pre-seed, Seed or Series A (not Series B or later) and are affiliated with an approved HubSpot for Startups partner or have verified venture funding get 90% off year one, 50% off year two and 25% off year three. Startups associated with an approved entrepreneurial organization get 30% off year one and 15% off year two. An annual commitment is required.

Claude Startups is Anthropic's program for early-stage founders building on Claude. Members get the Claude Startup Stack (partner discounts and credits worth up to $45,000), biweekly Applied AI group sessions and event invitations, and founders backed by a VC in Anthropic's partner network may be eligible for up to $100K in additional Claude API credits claimed through that VC. An expanded version launched on October 6, 2026 with a free year of Claude Team and $1,000 in API credits, but Anthropic paused those two perks on October 9 after an application surge. As of October 17, 2026 the official page says the current cohort is full and new applications are not being accepted.

AWS offers Kiro Startup Credits worth up to one year of Kiro Pro+ (listed at $40 per user per month with 2,000 credits) across Starter (up to 2 users), Growth (up to 10 users) and Scale (up to 30 users) tiers. The official terms set an application window from April 7 to December 31, 2026. Credits are deposited into your AWS account on approval, expire one year after issue, and are used through Kiro sign-in with AWS IAM Identity Center. Startups with active AWS Activate credits are not eligible.

OpenAI's startups page groups support into Build, Grow and Scale stages. Anyone can use the Build resources (starter repos, Build Hours and technical guides). The valuable benefits, free API credits, rate limit or usage tier upgrades and time with OpenAI's technical team, are unlocked through eligible VC partners. A partner VC gives you a referral code. OpenAI doesn't publish a public, self-serve credit amount.