Google will give an AI-first startup up to $350,000 in cloud credits over two years. Cloudflare's top tier matches it, AWS Activate adds up to $200,000, and Datadog covers up to $100,000 of monitoring in year one.
I went through 42 startup programs and read the terms on each provider's own page wherever the page loaded. 30 programs publish terms I could verify, and 15 of those put a dollar figure on the offer, which adds up to $1,378,300 in credits and plan value.
What's in the stack
42 programs across 11 categories, from cloud and AI APIs to CRM, support and cap tables
The offer, the dollar value and the link to apply for each one
The route in: apply directly, show a funding round or bring a partner code
The funding and company-age caps that close each deal
A status on every row: 30 verified, 10 reported by startup-deal trackers and 2 closed right now
Every row links to the provider's own page, so you can check the terms on the day you apply.
Two-thirds of the money is cloud
Cloud and hosting holds $930,000 of the verified dollars, 67% of the total. Google for Startups Cloud and Cloudflare top out at $350,000 each, AWS Activate at $200,000 and Vercel at $30,000.
Product analytics comes second at $255,000, and most of that figure is plan value: Mixpanel puts $145,000 on its free year and Amplitude puts $60,000 on its own, while PostHog's $50,000 comes as credits. Most teams run one of the three, so count one.
Dev tools add $185,000, led by Datadog's $100,000 and a year of Retool at 100% off, worth up to $60,000.
The AI labs keep the tightest door
Verified AI API money comes to $5,500, all of it from ElevenLabs' grant. Anthropic's startup cohort is full right now, and OpenAI routes its startup credits through partner VCs, with a reported $50,000 per participant in its Grove cohort. Microsoft's $150,000 investor tier sits in the database as reported too, flagged so you confirm it before you plan around it.
What a $3M seed AI startup can claim
Picture an AI-first company, 18 months old, with a $3 million seed round closed this year and a lead investor in the usual partner programs. With one deal per job, it can stack $715,000 in credits:
Cloud: Google for Startups Cloud on the AI track, $350,000 over two years
Edge and CDN: Cloudflare's partner tier for companies under $5 million raised, $100,000
Monitoring: Datadog, up to $100,000
Internal tools: Retool, a year at 100% off, up to $60,000
Analytics: PostHog, $50,000
Frontend: Vercel, up to $30,000
Code and search: GitHub and Algolia, $10,000 each
Errors: Sentry, up to $5,000
On top of the credits come a free year of Auth0 B2B Professional, 12 months of Atlassian Premium, 6 months of Notion's Business plan and 80% off Attio's Pro plan in year one.
The plan picks one tool per job on purpose. Adding AWS on top of Google puts another $200,000 on paper, and that money only turns into runway if you run workloads on both clouds.
Below the paywall: the Notion template with all 42 programs, ready to duplicate, plus the 30-day claim plan, the stage stacks for Day 1, Seed and Series A, and five ways to get partner codes, including the email to send your investors.
Your subscription also opens The VC Corner's subscriber perks page, with 28 partner offers from companies like AWS, Google Cloud, Datadog, Vercel, Perplexity and Stripe, and every founder resource in the archive:
The startup data room template for your next round
222 startup pitch decks, sorted by stage and business model
The 13-week cash flow forecast to track the runway these credits buy, and the SAFE conversion calculator
10,000+ investors in the investor lists and the financial models library
Cancel anytime. First subscribers get 50% off forever.
Get the template:
Open the link and click Duplicate at the top right to copy the template into your own Notion workspace. The Deals database comes with seven views: