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AI Platforms programs for startups

10 programs, sorted by credit value.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA Inception

NVIDIA
Max value
Free program, value in partnerships, pricing, VC exposure

Free program for AI/ML startups, preferred hardware pricing, VC Alliance exposure, unlocks downstream credits.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededBootstrappedPre-seed
Verified Apr 2026314 day review
Anthropic

Anthropic Startup Program

Anthropic
Max value
$25,000+ in Claude credits

$1K–$25K+ in Claude API credits plus priority rate limits for startups building with Claude.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededBootstrappedPre-seed
Verified Apr 2026721 day review
Modal

Modal Startup Program

Modal
Max value
Up to $25,000 in credits

Up to $25K in Modal serverless GPU credits, Python-native containers, sub-second cold starts, autoscaling H100/A100 for inference and batch jobs.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededPre-seedSeed
Verified Apr 2026314 day review
Pinecone

Pinecone Startup Program

Pinecone
Max value
Standard Tier + Pro Support + ~$5K credits

Free Pinecone Standard Tier + Pro Support (RBAC, backups, Slack) + ~$5K in usage credits.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededPre-seedSeed
Verified Apr 2026510 day review
Hugging Face

Hugging Face Startup Program

Hugging Face
Max value
Up to 50% off Enterprise Hub Year 1

Discounted Hugging Face Enterprise Hub for early AI startups, private model repos, inference endpoints, Spaces compute, and SOC 2 / GDPR posture.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededBootstrappedPre-seed
Verified Apr 2026521 day review
Fireworks AI

Fireworks for Startups

Fireworks AI
Max value
~$5K–$10K credits + engineering access

Build credits (~$5K–$10K), elevated rate limits, and access to applied-AI engineers for AI-native startups.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededPre-seedSeed
Verified Apr 2026514 day review
Together AI

Together AI for Startups

Together AI
Max value
$1K–$25K in credits depending on partner

Together AI inference and fine-tuning credits, high-throughput hosted endpoints for Llama, Mistral, Qwen, DeepSeek, and dedicated GPU clusters at startup pricing.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededPre-seedSeed
Verified Apr 2026514 day review
Weights & Biases

Weights & Biases for Startups

Weights & Biases
Max value
Up to 12 months of W&B Pro free

Free W&B Pro for startups, experiment tracking, model registry, evals, and prompt observability for ML/LLM teams.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededPre-seedSeed
Verified Apr 2026310 day review
Replicate

Replicate Startup Credits

Replicate
Max value
$1K–$10K in credits

Replicate inference credits for startups, pay-per-second hosted inference for open-source LLMs, image models (FLUX, SDXL), and custom Cog containers.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededBootstrappedPre-seed
Verified Apr 2026314 day review
OpenAI

OpenAI for Startups

OpenAI
Max value
$2,500 (Ramp) / $1,000 (Researcher) / invitation-only higher tiers

No single flagship program, credits come via Ramp ($2.5K), Researcher Access ($1K), or invitation-only VC paths.

AI PlatformsNo referral neededBootstrappedPre-seed
Verified Apr 2026130 day review