Best offer on record: Baseten AI Startup Program ("Baseten for Startups") — up to $25,000 credits (Dedicated Inference/Training) + up to $2,500 (Model APIs). 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Baseten AI Startup Program ("Baseten for Startups") — up to $25,000 credits (Dedicated Inference/Training) + up to $2,500 (Model APIs) high confidence
Per-application grant, not automatic: 'Up to $25,000 in credits for Dedicated Inference or Training' plus 'Up to $2,500 in credits for Model APIs'. Credits are non-cash, applied to Baseten Inference and Training Services under Baseten T&C. Acceptance is at Baseten's sole discretion; the amount awarded is set per applicant. Extras with admission: support starting at response times 'within a few business hours', shared Slack channels and Zoom calls, cross-cloud autoscaling, GTM amplification for launches/raises, invitations to Baseten-hosted networking events. Page fetched live 2026-10-22; terms unchanged since the legal disclaimers' last update (October 7, 2025).
Eligibility
Early-stage AI-first startups: 'artificial intelligence needs to be core to your primary products or solutions'; funding stage Seed to Series A; started less than 5 years ago; 'VC funded' framing on the page (criteria do not hard-require VC backing — bootstrapped AI startups appear possible but must confirm at application). Net-new customers only: never received any Baseten credits, and the company domain must not have been subscribed to a paid Baseten Service plan within 31 days of applying. Excluded: IPO'd or acquired companies, educational institutions, government entities, nonprofits, personal blogs/content, dev shops, consultancies, agencies, crypto mining companies. No .edu requirement (students are not the target), no region limit stated. No credit card required to apply; no equity requested.
How to claim
1) Sign up for a Baseten account (login.baseten.co/sign-up). 2) Apply via baseten.co/startup-program/ → 'Join the program' → baseten.co/talk-to-us/startup-program/. 3) Wait for manual review (third-party trackers report ~2–10 business days; acceptance is discretionary). 4) On acceptance, credits are applied to your account. Do NOT burn any paid plan or use more than the default signup credits before applying — net-new status (no Baseten credits ever) and the 31-day paid-plan rule are the main disqualifiers.
Expiry
Credits expire 6 months from grant date ('used within 6 months of their grant date and will expire if not consumed after 6 months'); no stated end date or renewal for the program itself.
Gotchas
'Up to' amounts — award size is per-applicant, not guaranteed maximum. Net-new rule: receiving the default signup credits or a paid trial before applying can disqualify you. 31-day paid-plan rule (legal disclaimer #2, last updated 2025-10-07). Credits cover inference/training compute and Model API usage only; after the 6-month window unused credits vanish. Support SLA is 'business hours', not 24/7. JPMorgan's tracker lists tech support response at max 48h via dashboard UI. Common rejection reasons per trackers: personal email instead of company domain, thin/placeholder website, application data mismatched with Crunchbase/PitchBook.
New-account signup ('starting') credits — unannounced amount, no application medium confidence
Official pricing FAQ (fetched 2026-10-22): 'Do you offer free credits to get started? Yes, new Baseten accounts come with credits so you can get to know the UI and experiment with deployments for free.' Baseten's billing docs (docs.baseten.co/organization/billing) add: 'New workspaces receive credits for testing and deployment. Baseten applies credits to the current invoice before charging a payment method; you do not need to redeem them.' No exact dollar amount is published by Baseten. Third-party trackers (pricepertoken.com, infrabase.ai, Perkstack, aicredits.dev — per their notes the figure traces to Baseten's changelog announcement of usage-based pricing) report the amount as $30 per new workspace; treat $30 as plausible but unconfirmed (the live balance in a new workspace's billing dashboard is authoritative). One-time, per-workspace grant; not recurring.
Eligibility
Any new Baseten account/workspace, no application, no funding/age/status requirement. No credit card required to receive the starting credits.
How to claim
Sign up at app.baseten.co (email, Google, or GitHub), verify email, create a workspace. Credits are attached automatically — nothing to redeem. They offset all usage (dedicated GPU time, Model API calls, training) and are deducted before any payment method is charged; balance visible on the billing dashboard. If you don't see them, Baseten's docs say to contact them.
Expiry
No published expiry for the starting-credits balance; docs say 'Baseten doesn't offer a separate free tier or perpetual free plan' — beyond the starting credits you pay standard per-minute / per-token rates. When credits run out with no payment method on file, Baseten deactivates your models until one is added.
Gotchas
Exact amount is unannounced by Baseten (the $30 figure is third-party/changelog-sourced — verify in your billing dashboard). This signup credit counts toward 'never received any credits from Baseten before', so it affects Startup Program net-new eligibility — apply for the program before spending/using paid features. No idle-time billing (scale-to-zero supported). Model API rate limits on the Basic plan are defaults, not a free allowance.
Baseten has no education license, .edu program, or student credits. Official support KB (support-legacy.baseten.co, article last updated ~1 month before 2026-10-22): 'We don't have a self-serve credits program for individual students or projects, so we can't grant credits from a support request — sorry to be the bearers. What does exist: Startups may qualify for the Baseten Startup Program.' The Startup Program's legal disclaimers explicitly exclude 'educational institutions'. Occasional one-off hackathon sponsorships (e.g., shared endpoints at HackMIT 2024, ad-hoc extra credits on request) are the only student-facing touches; none are standing offers.
Eligibility
Not applicable — no standing student/education offer. .edu email confers no benefits. Educational institutions are ineligible for the Startup Program.
How to claim
Nothing to claim. If you are a student or academic, your only paths are the generic new-account starting credits, or forming an AI-first early-stage company to apply to the Startup Program.