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Nebius AI Lift, announced at NVIDIA GTC 2025 and running through 2026, offers eligible NVIDIA Inception members up to 150,000 US dollars in cloud credits for Nebius AI cloud infrastructure, plus 10,000 dollars for inference workloads, alongside AI technical expertise and support.
The programme's defining structural feature is that it is gated on NVIDIA Inception membership rather than being directly open, which creates a two-step application path that startups frequently miss.
NVIDIA Inception itself is free, takes no equity, has no fees, no cohorts and no deadlines, and requires only that the company be officially incorporated, less than ten years old, employ at least one developer and maintain a working website, while excluding consulting firms, cryptocurrency companies, cloud service providers, resellers and public companies.
Once admitted, an Inception member gains access to a benefits portal through which partner cloud credits can be requested, with Nebius AI Lift among the largest single offers available and the AWS Activate partner path another.
The practical implication is that joining NVIDIA Inception is the highest-leverage first move for any AI startup seeking compute, because it unlocks multiple partner credit programmes from one free application rather than requiring separate negotiations with each provider.
Beyond credits, AI Lift provides guaranteed priority access to current AI infrastructure and early access to the NVIDIA Blackwell platform on Nebius instances, plus discounted long-term commitments for startups scaling beyond the credit allocation.
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Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: The binding requirement is NVIDIA Inception membership: a startup must already be an Inception member to apply for Nebius AI Lift, and there is no direct route into the credit programme for a non-member. NVIDIA Inception membership is itself free and available on a rolling basis with no application fees, deadlines or cohorts, and its criteria are that the company be officially incorporated, be less than ten years old, employ at least one developer and maintain a working website. Inception explicitly excludes consulting firms, cryptocurrency-related companies, cloud service providers, resellers and public companies, and these exclusions carry through to AI Lift, so an AI services consultancy cannot access the credits regardless of its technical work. Once an Inception member, a company requests partner cloud credits through the Inception benefits portal, where the Nebius AI Lift offer of up to 150,000 dollars appears alongside other partner offers. No geographic restriction is stated for AI Lift, though NVIDIA Inception operates a separate contact route for China-based companies. An enhanced benefits package including the 10,000 dollar inference allocation and early Blackwell access was offered to Inception startups joining the Nebius programme within its first three months, so current terms may differ from those announced at launch. Prospective applicants should join NVIDIA Inception first at the NVIDIA startups page, then confirm the current AI Lift terms through the Inception benefits portal or directly with Nebius, since vendor credit programmes are revised frequently and third-party summaries lag the official terms. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows eligible startups receive up to 150,000 US dollars in Nebius cloud credits, plus an additional 10,000 dollars earmarked for inference workloads, giving a maximum of 160,000 dollars; amount_min is recorded as 150,000 and amount_max as 160,000. The separation of a dedicated inference allocation from the main credit pool is an unusually practical design detail. Training and inference have different cost profiles and different timelines, and startups routinely exhaust a single pooled credit balance on training runs and then have nothing left to serve the resulting model to users, which is the point at which commercial traction would otherwise begin; ring-fencing inference credit prevents that failure. The programme also offers significant savings for startups committing to long-term AI scaling, meaning discounted committed-use pricing after credits are consumed, and guaranteed priority access to current-generation infrastructure including early access to the NVIDIA Blackwell platform on Nebius cloud instances. Priority access is a genuine benefit rather than marketing in a market where small companies are frequently unable to obtain current-generation GPU capacity at any price. As with all vendor credit programmes the award is non-dilutive but not equivalent to cash: it is redeemable only on Nebius infrastructure, and a team should weigh the value against the cost of building its stack on a specific provider. An enhanced benefits package was offered to NVIDIA Inception startups joining within the first three months of the programme. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
Applications for Nebius AI Lift Program for AI Startups: Up to $150,000 in Cloud Credits via NVIDIA Inception are due December 31, 2026. Build your timeline backwards from this date to cover registrations, approvals, and final submission checks.
Nebius AI Lift Program for AI Startups: Up to $150,000 in Cloud Credits via NVIDIA Inception is funded by Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS) in partnership with NVIDIA Inception. Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
The Sony Research Award Program is Sony's principal channel for funding external academic research, and the Focused Research Award is its collaborative track: up to 150,000 dollars for focused joint research between a university or research institute and Sony. The 2026 research areas are unusually broad for a corporate program and cover most of the modern AI stack alongside Sony's hardware interests - AI and large language models, computer vision, machine learning, robotics, human-computer interaction, affective computing, speech and language technologies, audio technologies, RF sensing, wireless communications, cybersecurity, sports technology, digital humans, generative AI, content creation and neural rendering, plus device-level areas including MicroLED and optical metasurfaces. For AI and robotics groups this makes it one of the wider corporate calls available, though the breadth is deceptive: Sony funds work that connects to its own research agenda, and proposals are strongest when there is an identifiable Sony research counterpart for the collaboration. Eligibility is tightly drawn around the principal investigator rather than the institution. The PI must be a full-time faculty member or researcher at a recognized institution - Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor or equivalent researcher - and must be able to supervise PhD students. Co-PIs are permitted but must be from the same institution and meet the same requirements, which rules out the cross-institutional consortia common in public funding. The 2026 deadline is 15 September 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific, with a separate India-specific time given as 16 September 2026. Submission guidelines are on the Sony Research Award Program site.
The Meta Research PhD Fellowship supports doctoral students conducting research in areas central to Meta's technical agenda, with several of its annual award tracks dedicated to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Current AI-relevant tracks include AI System Hardware/Software Co-Design (high-performance AI algorithms spanning model compression, numerical optimization, benchmarking, and distributed inference and training), Applied Statistics (bias and variance estimation and correction in models and datasets, uncertainty quantification), AR/VR Human Understanding (efficient ML techniques that run on AR/VR devices), and Programming Languages (program synthesis, probabilistic and differentiable programming). Recipients receive two years of paid tuition and fees, a $42,000 annual stipend covering living expenses and conference travel, and a paid visit to Meta headquarters for the annual Fellowship Summit; the award carries no intellectual property claim on the student's research. The 2027 cycle opened August 3, 2026 with applications closing September 20, 2026, reference letters due in October 2026, and winners notified in January 2027.
OpenAI's AI and Teen Development Research Grant Program makes up to 5,000,000 US dollars available in grants of up to 1,000,000 dollars for independent research on how AI affects adolescent development and wellbeing. Applications opened 8 September 2026 at 8:00 AM PDT and close 6 October 2026 at 11:59 PM PST, with notifications by 13 November 2026, and submission is through the SurveyMonkey Apply platform. The published scope has four strands: teen usage patterns and developmental outcomes; AI's potential effects on young people's lives; the factors that cause those effects to differ across populations and contexts; and design interventions and safety mechanisms. The inclusion of the fourth strand is what separates this from a pure effects-measurement programme, since it invites work that proposes and tests product-level safeguards rather than only documenting harm or benefit. The third strand is equally notable: OpenAI is asking specifically about heterogeneity of effect, which is an implicit acknowledgement that aggregate findings about teen AI use have limited policy value. Review is rolling and conducted by internal researchers and outside experts. Non-profit applicants are preferred and for-profit organisations are explicitly not prioritised, and indirect costs are capped at 10 percent of the grant, both of which shape who can realistically compete.
On September 22, 2026, SBA awarded more than $8 million through the Federal and State Technology Partnership Program — 50 organizations, up to $180,000 each, 43 renewals and only 7 newcomers, performance beginning September 30. FAST is not a grant you apply for. It is a subsidy for the proposal help you are currently paying for, and the statutory match tiers explain why the strongest innovation states keep losing coverage.
Read articleThe Atlassian Foundation opened a global call on October 1 and closes it October 30 at 11:59 pm AEDT. Up to US$1 million per partnership over two years, capped at 25 percent of the lead organization's operating budget — which means the full million requires a US$4 million two-year budget.
Read articleNSF 26-513 makes roughly $100 million available for up to 10 State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs at $4M to $12M each over five years. One award per state or multi-state region. One proposal per organization. And NSF is not buying you GPUs — it funds the coordination, the workforce and the faculty training, while the compute has to come from partners you have to already have.
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