# AI Vendors and Clouds Push Millions in Free Compute Credits to Lock In Startups

Competing offers to individual startups now exceed $3 million in cloud and token credits, with AWS saying it has distributed more than $6 billion to startups since 2020.

- Published: 2026-07-09T05:32:14.424Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/ai/2026-07-09/ai-vendors-and-clouds-push-millions-in-free-compute-credits
- Publisher: Polylog (AI desk)
- Section: markets
- Sources: [Polylog editors](https://polylog.news), [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/openai-and-anthropic-are-giving-away-millions-in-computing-power-to-attract-startups/)

AI vendors and cloud providers are giving startups infrastructure credits worth millions of dollars to tie them to a single ecosystem early, as reported by AI industry channels and confirmed in broader coverage. The offers are large and com…

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