AI Grant is a global accelerator for pre-seed and seed-stage AI startups, offering one of the most generous and founder-friendly packages in the ecosystem. Each selected team receives a $250K investment on an uncapped MFN SAFE, $350K+ in Azure credits, and access to a world-class network of advisors, operators, and investors shaping the future of AI.
What founders get:
$250K investment with no cap, no discount — one of the most favorable early-stage terms available.
Massive cloud support: $350,000 in Azure credits plus over $700K+ in additional partner credits from OpenAI, Anthropic, Replicate, PostHog, ElevenLabs, Vercel, Cohere, Hugging Face, Stripe, Vapi, and more.
AI Grant Summit in San Francisco: A focused weekend with fellow founders and legendary advisors.
Exclusive Demo Day: Pitch in front of top-tier investors, executives, and AI-focused venture firms.
Founders Hub membership + GTM support: Courtesy of Microsoft for Startups.
A community of top AI builders:
AI Grant’s advisor list includes industry heavyweights such as David Holz (Midjourney), Andrej Karpathy, Tobi Lütke (Shopify), Patrick Collison (Stripe), Alexandr Wang (Scale), Dylan Field (Figma), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Noam Shazeer, and more — giving founders unmatched access to product, model, and company-building expertise.
Track record:
AI Grant has backed hundreds of AI-native startups across four batches, including products in generative video (Pika), infrastructure (Replicate, RunPod), voice (Play.ht), robotics (Matic Robots), developer tools (Cursor), SaaS automation (Momentic, Abstract AI), geospatial intelligence, model testing, deepfake detection, and more. Alumni span every category of modern AI—from consumer apps to frontier research and specialized enterprise agents.
Who it’s for:
Founders building AI-native products, tools, and applications — especially those who care about iteration, UX, and delivering something users genuinely love. No credentials are required, solo founders are welcome, and teams may even apply before forming a company.
About the program:
Originally launched in 2017 as a research grant initiative, AI Grant has evolved into a full-scale accelerator backed by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, who have invested $10M into the program. Larger follow-on investments (up to $100M) are available through their separate funds.
San Francisco, California, United States