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API credits, free inference tiers, startup programs and research grants from the frontier labs and the long tail. Every offer is checked against the provider’s own page: value, eligibility, limits, deadline, fine print.
VC-backed startups building on Gemini can get up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits over two years.
For: Startups that raised Pre-Seed/Seed within 5 years (or Series A within 12 months), founded within 5 years, built on Gemini, with under $5,000 in prior Google Cloud credits
Credits over 2 years
The Gemini API has a free tier with free input and output tokens on Gemini 3.x Flash and Flash-Lite models, no card needed.
For: Anyone with a Google account
Per-project RPM/TPM/RPD, see AI Studio
Max and Team subscribers get $100-$200/month (Team: up to $500 pooled) of Claude API credits, no card needed on the Console.
For: Max 5x, Max 20x or Team plan subscribers (Free, Pro and Enterprise are not eligible)
Credits refresh each billing cycle; no rollover
VC-backed startups building on Gemini can get up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits over two years.
Microsoft for Startups offers Azure credits of up to $150,000, AI tools and technical support to eligible startups.
Open Kaggle competitions (ARC-AGI-2 and ARC-AGI-3) plus a paper prize, with $2M in prizes and submissions due Nov 2, 2026.
Online build Nov 3-8, 2026 on lablab.ai: build a sandboxed agent on Vultr; every participant gets $200 in Vultr credits.
Global online Devpost hackathon: build something with PayPal APIs and AI by Nov 12, 2026 for a share of $69,750.
AWS Activate gives startups $1,000-$5,000 (self-funded) or up to $200,000 (via an Activate Provider) in AWS credits, usable on Bedrock.
NVIDIA Inception is free to join, with discounts, training and access to free cloud credits from NVIDIA and partners.
Cloudflare gives startups $10K, $100K or $350K in credits for a year, depending on funding and partner backing.
Seed-to-Series A startups new to Modal can apply for a one-time grant of free GPU credits plus engineering support.
Startups backed by an eligible VC partner can unlock OpenAI credits plus technical and go-to-market support.
Approved startups in Europe and Asia start with $1,000 of fal credits, scaling to $5,000 as monthly spend grows.
VC-backed startups can get discounted LangSmith rates and up to $10,000 in credits.
Neon advertises up to $100k in credits for early-stage startups, plus sponsorship for open source projects.
Verified students get GitHub Copilot Student (unlimited completions plus an AI credit allowance) and dozens of other partner offers.
Virtual 10-day hackathon building on Meta's Muse models for a share of $1,000,000 in cash prizes; application closes October 25.
Opt in to share API traffic with OpenAI and eligible orgs get up to 1M-10M complimentary tokens a day on listed models.
Selected startups get $15K-$50K in Together platform credits plus free forward-deployed engineering hours, based on funds raised.