Anthropic is giving startups a free year of Claude Team, $1,000 in credits and up to $45,000 in perks

Anthropic has opened up its Claude Startups programme, offering approved companies a free year of Claude Team, $1,000 in API credits and up to $45,000 in discounts from other AI companies. It is open to bootstrapped and venture-backed startups alike, as long as they are young enough to qualify.

The programme first launched in May, and Anthropic told CNBC that thousands of companies already take part. It is now pitching it to many more founders as it heads towards its IPO, and as OpenAI and Google court the same startups with programmes of their own.

What startups get

• A free year of Claude Team: up to five Premium seats, but only for organisations that are new to Team.
• $1,000 in Claude API credits: a one-off grant that expires six months after it is given. Members with credits also get higher API rate limits.
• The Claude Startup Stack: offers worth up to $45,000 from companies that build on Claude, redeemed with codes in the Claude Console. They include $5,000 of ClickHouse Cloud credits, 12 months of ElevenLabs, three months of Granola Business and discounts on Gamma and Firecrawl. Anthropic notes these are offered by the third-party companies, not by Anthropic.
• Office hours and events: 45-minute sessions with Anthropic’s Applied AI team every other week, plus hackathons, meetups and its Founder House events.

Startups backed by a venture capital firm in Anthropic’s partner network can also get up to $100,000 in extra API credits, claimed through their investor.

Who can apply

The programme is open to startups founded in the last five years or that raised money in the last two. Applicants need a Claude Console account, a company email address that matches their website’s domain and a short description of what they are building, and must meet Anthropic’s supportability policies, which govern where and how Claude can be used.

Anthropic says most applications are decided within minutes, and the rest go to a manual review that usually takes two to three business days. Approved members claim the Team offer and credits from a Claude Startups page in the Claude Console.

There are limits worth knowing. The credits only work on Anthropic’s own API through the Claude Console, not on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI or other platforms that resell Claude. And the free Team year doesn’t apply to companies already paying for Team.

Why Anthropic is doing it

Most of Anthropic’s revenue comes from businesses rather than consumers, and a startup that builds its product on Claude early can grow into a large customer. In a statement, Anthropic said it believes “the benefits of AI will reach most people through the companies that build on top of models, rather than through the models alone”.

The timing also matters. Anthropic’s IPO filing shows how heavily it is spending to keep growing, as our look at its $2 trillion ambitions explains, and today’s startups are tomorrow’s big API customers.

Why it matters

For a small team, a free year of Claude Team and $1,000 of credits is real money, and the application takes minutes. For Anthropic, it is a cheap way to win the next generation of AI companies before OpenAI or Google does.

Sources: Anthropic (Claude Startups), Startup Program Terms, CNBC.