OpenAI, Anthropic, and cloud providers are racing to outbid each other with free token and compute credits to win over business customers. Some startups are getting offers worth millions.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, top AI companies are flooding young startups with compute credits. Hans Ibarra, founder of AI voice startup Dialogus, says he's received competing offers that in some cases add up to more than $3 million in cloud computing and token credits. That's roughly the size of an average US seed round, according to PitchBook. Cursor, the AI coding firm acquired by SpaceX, offered a 75 percent discount through July 5.
Cloud providers are in on the action too. A Google Cloud spokesperson said the company hands out up to $500,000 in credits, early access to Gemini models, and occasional access to DeepMind engineers. Microsoft and Amazon Web Services offer similar perks. The goal is to pull startups into their ecosystem early and make the tools too sticky to leave.
Discount war heats up even as IPO pressure mounts
These offers come as OpenAI and Anthropic need to improve their margins ahead of expected IPOs. At the same time, competition is growing from open and cheaper models, many of them out of China. Anthropic's revenue surged late last year thanks to Claude Code and Cowork. OpenAI reportedly didn't catch up until it released GPT-5.4 in March and is now actively selling its Codex tool to startups.
