AI Grant Pre-Seed Investment Program is a grant from AI Grant that funds early-stage AI-native startups through pre-seed investment and accelerator support. Each accepted company receives $250,000 on an uncapped SAFE, plus up to $600,000 in cloud credits (Azure and additional providers), access to a San Francisco summit with advisors and founders, and a Demo Day with prominent investors.

The program is open to single founders and small teams building products that meaningfully leverage AI models, regardless of credentials. Companies that have already raised funding may apply. Past cohorts have produced notable AI companies including Perplexity, Cursor, Pika, and Granola, reflecting a strong track record in backing transformative AI infrastructure and application startups.

AI Grant — accelerator for seed-stage AI startups $250,000 on an uncapped SAFE for your AI-native product startup $350,000 in Azure credits + $250,000 in additional credits Summit in San Francisco with advisors and founders Demo Day with world-class investors Applications for Batch 4 are closed David Holz , CEO of Midjourney and Leap Motion Andrej Karpathy , founding member of OpenAI Patrick Collison , CEO of Stripe Tobi Lütke , CEO of Shopify Lukas Biewald , CEO of Weights and Biases Alexandr Wang , CEO of Scale.

ai Amjad Masad , CEO of Replit Noam Shazeer , co-creator of transformers and CEO of Character Mike Krieger , cofounder of Instagram Guillermo Rauch , CEO of Vercel Christina Cacioppo , CEO of Vanta Dylan Field , CEO of Figma Aravind Srinivas , CEO of Perplexity Looking for our open source grant program? Check out aigrant. org .

AI Grant companies — batch 4 Goodfire — Interpretability tools Silurian — Weather forecasting foundation models Granola — AI notepad for meetings Pulse AI — Intelligent document extraction InspectMind AI — AI plan checker for construction Hamming — Testing for AI voice agents Agency — AI agents for B2B customer success Artificial Analysis — Independent benchmarks and evaluations Pursuit — Public sector sales Graylark — Geospatial intelligence for defense and enterprise Haize Labs — AI model hazing Rowan — AI molecular simulation Vapi — Simple voice agent API Juicebox — Autopilot for recruiting Supertrace AI — AI network engineers Inception Labs — diffusion large language models AI Grant companies — batch 3 Antimetal — AI-powered cloud management Matic Robots — Autonomous indoor robots Omnivore — AI-enabled media consumption app Reworkd AI — Web extraction at scale Spark AI — Workflow automation for energy projects K-Scale Labs — Consumer humanoid robots Matrices — AI-native spreadsheet Browserbase — Browser infrastructure for AI applications Didero — Autonomous supply chains Consensus — LLM-powered search for research Method Security — Autonomous cyber defense Yuma AI — Automated customer service for Shopify Abel — AI for local governments Virtual Staging AI — AI tools for realtors Symphonic Labs — Wearable silent speech interfaces DayDream Dental — Automated financial operations for dentists Creatify AI — Short-form marketing videos Womp Labs — Training data optimization AI Grant companies — batch 2 Pika — cutting-edge generative video ggml — run AI models anywhere MatX — specialized chips for AI Lindy — AI personal assistant Freed — AI medical scribe Mathpix — AI-powered document automation Abstract AI — 100% AI-handled customer support Julius — AI data scientist Hume AI — AI toolkit to understand emotional expression Cofactory — factory for generating companies with LLMs Induced — AI-first browser RPA platform Zeta Labs — automate routine online tasks Common Sense Machines — game-engine ready 3-D content Guru AI — easy-to-use video analysis models Echo Labs — human-level transcription Reality Defender — deepfake detection Andiron AI — e-commerce optimization Portola — AI-powered creative tools for kids Espresso AI — optimize Snowflake queries using LLMs Jenni — AI workspace for researchers AutogenAI — generate bids proposals using LLMs Listen Labs — AI-led user interviews Tutor Intelligence — AI cobots RunPod — serverless GPU platform Akool — personalized visual marketing content Coframe — automated A/B testing OpusClip — AI video clipping tool Kino AI — organize video assets AI Grant companies — batch 1 Perplexity — the fastest way to get an answer Cursor — AI-first code editor Replicate — cloud infrastructure for ML models Animato — video chat with AI characters Minion.

ai — automated browser assistant Recraft — generate vector art and 3D images Flair — AI design tool for branded content ValueBase — AI property valuation models for municipal governments WOMBO — magical consumer AI experiences Chroma — programmable memory for AI Poly Corp — AI-generated textures Sameday — appointment scheduling AI Play.

ht — AI voiceover for podcasts Ghostwrite — automatic email composer BuildShip — low-code visual backend builder Birch — automating complex call center operations in regulated industries Vizcom — AI-powered engineering drawings Circle Labs — generative AI friends Samaya AI — knowledge discovery platform for financial services Secret Weapons — AI video tools used by Hollywood Pixelcut — AI-powered product photos AniML — NeRF-generated product videos Dust — browser copilot for teams Forefront — enterprise chatbot A $250k investment via a no cap, no discount MFN SAFE ( available here ).

A weekend with peers and advisors at the AI Grant Summit in San Francisco A chance to present at the AI Grant Demo Day in San Francisco in front of an invite-only group of world-class investors $350,000 in cloud credits from Azure, along with other startup benefits, membership in the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, and go-to-market support $55,000 in credits from PostHog $50,000 in credits from Replicate $30,000 in credits from Anthropic $25,000 in credits from Modal $15,000 in credits from OpenAI $12,000 in credits from Vercel $11,000 in credits from Eleven Labs $10,000 in credits from Vapi $10,000 in credits from Hugging Face $10,000 in credits from AssemblyAI $10,000 in credits from Perplexity $10,000 in credits from Fireworks AI 10 free seats from Weights and Biases 10 free seats from Julius AI 25% off models from Cohere $7,500 in credits from Together AI $5,000 in credits from Zilliz Cloud $2,500 in credits from Stripe $2,500 in credits from Clerk $2,500 in credits from Pilot $1,000 in credits from Linear $1,000 in credits from Render Yes – no credentials required.

What type of company or project qualifies? Anything that leverages AI models in a useful or engaging way. In particular, we're looking for technical & pragmatic founders who want to build great products.

If you get a thrill from making something that other people love to use, and you understand that building a new product is 1% idea and 99% iteration, we want to support you. Our focus with AI Grant is on pre-seed/seed-stage startups. Wait, is this a grant or an investment?

It is an investment. When we started AI Grant in 2017, we handed out much smaller grants for fundamental research. We awarded grants to 36 individuals , who went on to do important research, and to found companies like Cohere , Helia , and Cresta .

Five years later, it seems much has changed: AI research is abundant, but UX and product innovation is just getting started, and so we're relaunching the program with a focus on AI products & investments versus AI papers & grants. Nat and Daniel have invested $10M in AI Grant. The company investments themselves are made by AI Grant LLC.

Are larger investments available? Nat and Daniel separately invest in startups, generally leading rounds, investing between $1M and $100M. Companies that receive larger investments will also have access to the Andromeda Cluster .

Will you fund multiple projects working on the same thing? Yes. We plan to fund many companies; some form of overlap is bound to happen.

Ultimately, we don't think this will be an issue because we strongly believe the AI product market is enormous -- large enough to support both Lyft and Uber or Bing and Google. How will you select the winners? We're looking for smart and energetic people with actionable ideas that are clearly useful.

Demos are a big plus; not just because they're fun to look at, but because they hint at the type of person that cares about the end-user experience, which is ultimately all that matters. Do I need a company to apply? No, but you will need one if you're accepted into the program.

We only invest in Delaware corporations, but you can create one from almost anywhere in the world with Stripe Atlas (or other programs) in only a few days. Can I apply if I've raised money already? I'm a single founder.

Can I apply? I love this idea and I want to help! Can I provide additional funding, hardware, GPU time, datasets, mentorship, or help reviewing applications?

Yes! Thank you for being awesome! If you want to contribute in any way, please email us at sponsorship@aigrant.

org. I have further questions! How can I reach you?