Your cloud bill is probably the second line on your burn sheet, right behind payroll. Most founders treat it as a fixed cost to manage down, not capital to go raise. That's backwards. Business Chain tracks ten programmes that hand out compute, cloud, or infrastructure credits, and most of them go unclaimed every cycle. No equity changes hands. No board seat gets created. Runware's grant team reviews applications on a rolling basis and responds within two weeks. Founders will spend six weeks on a seed deck and skip a form that takes an afternoon.
Why this is the easiest money you'll never raise
Compare the paperwork. A priced round means a cap table, a term sheet, and months of diligence. The Alchemy + Arbitrum Grant hands out up to $500K in credits per team with none of that, because the money can only be spent on infrastructure Alchemy and Arbitrum already run. The Halcyon Incubator Fellowship pays a $10,000 stipend plus housing, equity-free. Grindstone Accelerator runs its program for free and takes no equity either. None of this is philanthropy. It's customer acquisition for infrastructure companies and a mandate for the public ones. You're not asking for a favor, you're a prospective long-term customer, and the application reflects that.
What the ten programmes actually cover, and where they stop
This is the part founders skip, and it's the part that matters most. Every one of these has a scope, and the scope is narrower than the invoice you're trying to kill.
- Google for Startups Cloud Program: up to $350,000 in Cloud credits for Seed to Series A startups building AI-first products, $200,000 for other early-stage companies. Covers compute, storage and managed services on Google Cloud. Does not cover headcount, third-party SaaS, or anything running outside GCP.
- Alchemy + Arbitrum Grant: up to $500K in credits per team, spendable on Alchemy's node infrastructure and the Arbitrum stack. Does not cover your AWS bill, your frontend hosting, or support staff.
- Runware Grant Program: up to $30,000 in API credits, decided on a rolling basis within two weeks. Covers inference calls through Runware's own API, not model training anywhere else.
- Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First Latin America: equity-free support bundling Google product credits, with eligible startups able to apply separately for Cloud credits. Covers Google's own stack, nothing beyond it.
- Business Chain MVP Grant: up to $10,000 in development services, in-kind, not cash. Covers build hours, not the hosting bill once the MVP ships.
- Halcyon Incubator Fellowship: $10,000 stipend plus housing, equity-free. Not a credit at all, it's cash and shelter while you burn through the credits above.
- Advanced Industries Accelerator Grants (Colorado OEDIT): varies by grant type, typically up to $250,000, scoped to Colorado-based advanced industries, not a general cloud subsidy.
- Ethereum Foundation Ecosystem Support: no fixed per-team figure. In 2021 the Foundation funded 136 projects for $26.9 million; in 2022, 397 projects for $30.0 million. Grants, not credits, scoped to ecosystem work.
- Elemental Impact: no fixed amount either. The program states that for every dollar invested, companies unlock additional matching funds, which is leverage, not a straight credit balance.
Here's the part that actually burns founders. Most credit grants run on a twelve-month clock from the day you're approved. If your build takes two years, and most real products do, you hit month thirteen with a full-price invoice and no plan for it. Read the expiry terms before you accept anything, not after you've already architected around the free tier.
Can you stack them
Mostly, yes, because they sit on different layers of your stack and nobody's policing overlap that doesn't exist. Google Cloud credits cover compute and storage. Alchemy and Arbitrum credits cover RPC calls and node infrastructure. Runware credits cover inference. None of these eligibility pages forbid holding a different vendor's credits at the same time. What does get checked is whether you've already taken that same vendor's credits before. Reapplying to the Google for Startups Cloud Program after already drawing down a prior Google credit grant is the kind of detail that gets an application flagged, not funded. Read the 'previously received' language before you go back to a name you've already used.
Making the clock work for you
- Spend credits on burst costs, not baseline. Use Runware's $30,000 for the inference spike before launch, not for the steady background calls you'll still owe for after the grant closes.
- Sequence applications to your build timeline, not your calendar quarter. Apply for Google's $200,000 to $350,000 in Cloud credits when you're roughly six months from needing that compute, not the day your incorporation paperwork clears.
- Treat the MVP Grant and the cloud credit as two separate budgets. Business Chain's up to $10,000 in development services builds the thing. Google's credits run it. Conflating the two means you under-ask for one or both.
- Put a line in your model for the month the credits end. If you can't say what your cloud bill looks like in month thirteen, you haven't planned around the grant, you've just delayed the invoice.
Ten programmes, none asking for equity, and most founders' cap tables would look identical whether they'd applied or not. The gap isn't competition for the money. It's that nobody checks the list.