One balance. Four Grok products.

xAI’s startup program gives you credits you can spend on everything they make. No separate grants to chase for each product.

x.ai/startups, the page I applied from.

80% released automatically once you’re up and running

6–12 mo of real usage is what they size the credits for

1 team hands-on onboarding + a direct line to their startups team

Grok Grok Build (coding agent) Grok Bot (sales, recruiting, metrics agents) Grok API

Apply in 10 minutes.

Open the apply page

Go to x.ai/startups → Apply as a startup. Use your company email (you@yourdomain.com), not Gmail. A matching domain is the first thing these programs check.

Say what you build, in one line

Product first. “MagicSlides turns any text, PDF or YouTube video into a deck” beats “we help teams build modern apps”. Cloudflare rejected me the first time because my site read like an agency.

Show you’ll actually use it

Name the exact Grok product and the job: “Grok API for slide generation, ~400M tokens a month”. Real numbers (users, revenue, tokens) get approved. “Exploring AI” gets ignored.

Have a live site + active socials

A working product page, your X / LinkedIn / GitHub. Bootstrapped is fine. You don’t need VC money for these programs.

Rejected? Reply on the same email thread, fix what they flagged, and ask for a re-review. That’s how my Cloudflare credits came through.

The 2 programs I already got.

Apply to all of them. Each one covers a different part of your bill: AI models, hosting, your team’s tools.

Cloudflare for Startups

Credits for Workers, R2 storage, D1, Workers AI and more, valid for one year. Bootstrapped founders qualify. Apply from cloudflare.com/forstartups.

I got: $10,000 in credits

Claude for Startups

Anthropic’s program for founders building on Claude. Apply from claude.com/programs/startups.

I got: Claude Team free for 12 months + $1,000 API credits

Grok for Startups

Applied. Credits across Grok, Grok Build, Grok Bot and the API. Apply from x.ai/startups.

Status: waiting to hear back

Next →

Credits cut your costs. Customers pay your bills. Turn the page.