AWS Activate for Y Combinator - $500,000
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/startups/credits
Description
Create account to comment on specific lines or Sign in
+ 1 Y Combinator batch companies receive one of the most generous cloud credit packages available through any accelerator: up to $500,000 in AWS credits, split between general cloud credits and AI-specific compute credits for AWS Trainium and Inferentia silicon. Credits are redeemable across 200+ AWS services including Amazon Bedrock (with third-party models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI, and others), Amazon EC2, Amazon SageMaker, and reserved GPU capacity. This package dwarfs the standard AWS Activate Portfolio tier ($100K–$200K) and positions AWS as the default cloud for YC-backed AI startups.
No comments on this line yet.
+ 2
No comments on this line yet.
+
3
No comments on this line yet.
+ 4
No comments on this line yet.
+ 6
No comments on this line yet.
+ 7 ComponentAmountWhat It Covers
No comments on this line yet.
+ 8 General Cloud Credits~$200,000Any eligible AWS service: compute (EC2, Lambda), storage (S3), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), networking, analytics, and more
No comments on this line yet.
+ 9 AI Silicon Credits~$300,000AWS Trainium (training) and Inferentia (inference) chip instances, Amazon Bedrock model usage, and reserved NVIDIA H100 GPU capacity
No comments on this line yet.
+ 10 Total$500,000Combined across all eligible services
No comments on this line yet.
+ 11
No comments on this line yet.
+ 12 Note: The exact breakdown may vary by YC batch and is negotiated between AWS and Y Combinator. The $500K figure was confirmed for the W24 (Winter 2024) cohort. Future cohorts may receive similar or adjusted packages.
No comments on this line yet.
+ 13
No comments on this line yet.
+
14
No comments on this line yet.
+ 15
No comments on this line yet.
+ 17
No comments on this line yet.
+ 18 • Active Y Combinator batch company — you must be accepted into a current or recent YC batch (W24 onward has confirmed $500K)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 19 • Company must be less than 10 years old
No comments on this line yet.
+ 20 • Must be pre-Series B (or self-funded)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 21 • Must not have previously received AWS Activate Portfolio credits of equal or greater value
No comments on this line yet.
+ 22 • Must have a valid AWS account with a credit card on file
No comments on this line yet.
+ 23 • Must have a functioning company website with a matching business email domain
No comments on this line yet.
+ 24
No comments on this line yet.
+ 25 This package is not available to YC alumni from older batches, YC Startup School participants, or companies that only applied to YC but were not accepted. Those groups can still apply for the standard AWS Activate Portfolio tier (up to $200K).
No comments on this line yet.
+ 26
No comments on this line yet.
+
27
No comments on this line yet.
+ 28
No comments on this line yet.
+ 30
No comments on this line yet.
+ 31 1. Get accepted into Y Combinator — the credit package is distributed through YC's partnership with AWS, not through the public Activate application
No comments on this line yet.
+ 32 2. Receive your Organization ID (Org ID) from YC — Y Combinator is an AWS Activate Provider and will share the specific Org ID and any promo codes during onboarding
No comments on this line yet.
+ 33 3. Create or sign in to your AWS account at aws.amazon.com — you need a credit card on file (no charge unless you exceed credits)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 34 4. Go to AWS Activate and click Apply Now
No comments on this line yet.
+ 35 5. Create an AWS Builder ID using your business email (must match your startup’s domain, e.g., founder@yourstartup.com — personal Gmail addresses are a common reason for rejection)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 36 6. Select the Portfolio Package and enter the Org ID provided by Y Combinator
No comments on this line yet.
+ 37 7. Complete your startup profile — company name, website, description, stage, AWS Account ID
No comments on this line yet.
+ 38 8. Submit the application — processing typically takes 7–10 business days
No comments on this line yet.
+ 39 9. Credits appear automatically in your AWS Billing Console under Billing > Credits once approved
No comments on this line yet.
+ 40
No comments on this line yet.
+ 41 Important caveats:
No comments on this line yet.
+ 42 • Use a business email that matches your company domain. Personal emails (Gmail, Yahoo) are the #1 cause of rejection
No comments on this line yet.
+ 43 • You cannot choose which services consume credits first — AWS applies credits automatically to the largest charges first
No comments on this line yet.
+ 44 • Credits that expire soonest are applied first
No comments on this line yet.
+ 45 • Apply as early as possible in your batch — the clock starts when credits are granted, not when you start using them
No comments on this line yet.
+ 46
No comments on this line yet.
+
47
No comments on this line yet.
+ 48
No comments on this line yet.
+ 50
No comments on this line yet.
+ 52
No comments on this line yet.
+ 53 CategoryExample Services
No comments on this line yet.
+ 54 ComputeAmazon EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS, Fargate
No comments on this line yet.
+ 55 AI/MLAmazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Rekognition, Comprehend, Polly, Transcribe, Textract
No comments on this line yet.
+ 56 AI SiliconTrainium instances (trn1, trn2), Inferentia instances (inf1, inf2)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 57 GPU ComputeEC2 P5 (H100), Capacity Blocks for ML (up to 512 H100 GPUs)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 58 StorageAmazon S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier
No comments on this line yet.
+ 59 DatabasesAmazon RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, ElastiCache, Redshift
No comments on this line yet.
+ 60 NetworkingCloudFront, VPC, Route 53 (DNS only, not domains), API Gateway
No comments on this line yet.
+ 61 AnalyticsAthena, EMR, Kinesis, OpenSearch
No comments on this line yet.
+ 62 Developer ToolsCodeBuild, CodePipeline, CloudWatch
No comments on this line yet.
+ 63
No comments on this line yet.
+ 65
No comments on this line yet.
+ 66 • AWS Marketplace purchases (except third-party Bedrock models)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 67 • Route 53 domain registrations or transfers
No comments on this line yet.
+ 68 • AWS Professional Services and Training
No comments on this line yet.
+ 69 • Amazon Mechanical Turk
No comments on this line yet.
+ 70 • Reserved Instance or Savings Plan upfront fees
No comments on this line yet.
+ 71 • Cryptocurrency mining workloads
No comments on this line yet.
+ 72 • AWS Managed Services
No comments on this line yet.
+ 73
No comments on this line yet.
+
74
No comments on this line yet.
+ 75
No comments on this line yet.
+ 77
No comments on this line yet.
+ 78 AWS Activate credits can be used on all models available through Amazon Bedrock, including third-party foundation models. As of early 2026, these include:
No comments on this line yet.
+ 79
No comments on this line yet.
+ 80 ProviderModels
No comments on this line yet.
+ 81 AnthropicClaude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude Opus 4, Claude Sonnet 4
No comments on this line yet.
+ 82 MetaLlama 4 (Scout, Maverick), Llama 3.3, Llama 3.2
No comments on this line yet.
+ 83 Mistral AIMistral Large 3, Magistral Small, Ministral 3 (3B/8B/14B)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 84 AmazonNova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Pro, Nova Premier, Titan models
No comments on this line yet.
+ 85 CohereCommand R+, Command R, Embed
No comments on this line yet.
+ 86 AI21 LabsJamba 2 models
No comments on this line yet.
+ 87 Stability AIStable Diffusion 3.5, SDXL
No comments on this line yet.
+ 88 DeepSeekDeepSeek R1
No comments on this line yet.
+ 89 OpenAIGPT-OSS (20B, 120B)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 90
No comments on this line yet.
+ 91 This is a major advantage — prior to April 2024, AWS credits could not be used for third-party Bedrock models. Now they can, making the YC package significantly more valuable for AI startups.
No comments on this line yet.
+ 92
No comments on this line yet.
+
93
No comments on this line yet.
+ 94
No comments on this line yet.
+ 96
No comments on this line yet.
+ 97 A large portion of the YC package ($300K) is specifically earmarked for AWS’s custom AI chips:
No comments on this line yet.
+ 98
No comments on this line yet.
+ 99 ChipUse CaseKey Advantage
No comments on this line yet.
+ 100 Trainium (trn1)Model trainingUp to 50% cost savings vs comparable EC2 GPU instances
No comments on this line yet.
+ 101 Trainium2 (trn2)Large-scale training~50% cheaper than NVIDIA H100 instances with competitive performance
No comments on this line yet.
+ 102 Trainium3Next-gen training (3nm)2.52 petaflops FP8, 144 GB HBM3e memory
No comments on this line yet.
+ 103 Inferentia (inf1)InferenceUp to 40% better price-performance for inference
No comments on this line yet.
+ 104 Inferentia2 (inf2)High-throughput inferenceOptimized for LLM and generative AI inference
No comments on this line yet.
+ 105
No comments on this line yet.
+ 106 Trainium and Inferentia require model compilation via the AWS Neuron SDK, which supports PyTorch and TensorFlow. Not all model architectures are supported — check the Neuron documentation for compatibility before committing.
No comments on this line yet.
+ 107
No comments on this line yet.
+
108
No comments on this line yet.
+ 109
No comments on this line yet.
+ 111
No comments on this line yet.
+ 112 • Credits are valid for 2 years from activation (activation = when credits are applied to your AWS account)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 113 • Credits cannot be extended — the AWS Activate team will not grant extensions under any circumstances
No comments on this line yet.
+ 114 • Unused credits are forfeited after expiration
No comments on this line yet.
+ 115 • If you have multiple credit grants, AWS applies the soonest-expiring credits first
No comments on this line yet.
+ 116 • Credits apply automatically to charges — you cannot earmark them for specific services
No comments on this line yet.
+ 117 • Monitor your balance in the AWS Billing Console > Credits page
No comments on this line yet.
+ 118
No comments on this line yet.
+
119
No comments on this line yet.
+ 120
No comments on this line yet.
+ 122
No comments on this line yet.
+ 123 YC companies can (and should) apply for credits from multiple cloud providers simultaneously:
No comments on this line yet.
+ 124
No comments on this line yet.
+ 125 ProviderProgramAmount
No comments on this line yet.
+ 126 AWSActivate for YC (this program)Up to $500,000
No comments on this line yet.
+ 127 Google CloudGoogle for Startups Cloud ProgramUp to $350,000 (AI startups)
No comments on this line yet.
+ 128 Microsoft AzureMicrosoft for Startups Founders HubUp to $150,000
No comments on this line yet.
+ 129
No comments on this line yet.
+ 130 Additionally, YC provides credits from other partners during batch onboarding (e.g., Stripe Atlas, Twilio, Segment). These are independent of the AWS package.
No comments on this line yet.
+ 131
No comments on this line yet.
+
132
No comments on this line yet.
+ 133
No comments on this line yet.
+ 135
No comments on this line yet.
+ 136 • Apply immediately when you join your YC batch — the 2-year clock starts at credit activation, not at the end of the batch
No comments on this line yet.
+ 137 • Set up AWS Budgets and billing alerts in the Billing Console — once credits run out, charges go directly to your credit card with no warning
No comments on this line yet.
+ 138 • Use Cost Explorer to track burn rate and project when credits will run out
No comments on this line yet.
+ 139 • Trainium/Inferentia are cheaper but less flexible than NVIDIA GPUs — not all frameworks and model architectures are supported by the Neuron SDK. Test compatibility early
No comments on this line yet.
+ 140 • Business Support credits — the Portfolio tier typically includes up to $10,000 in separate AWS Business Support credits, giving you access to 24/7 technical support
No comments on this line yet.
+ 141 • You cannot reapply for the same tier. If you received $500K through YC, you cannot apply again through another Activate Provider for the same or lower amount
No comments on this line yet.
+ 142 • More than 70% of YC companies run on AWS, and that number rises to 80% for AI/ML-focused companies
No comments on this line yet.
+ 143 • Credits are non-transferable — they are tied to your AWS account and cannot be moved to another account or consolidated billing organization
No comments on this line yet.
+ 144
No comments on this line yet.
+
145
No comments on this line yet.
+ 146
No comments on this line yet.
+ 147 Sources:
No comments on this line yet.
+ 148 • AWS Activate Credits Page
No comments on this line yet.
+ 149 • AWS Activate Credits for Bedrock Announcement
No comments on this line yet.
+ 150 • AWS $500K Credits for YC Startups — The Register
No comments on this line yet.
+ 151 • AWS Activate Application Guide
No comments on this line yet.
+ 152 • AWS Activate FAQ
No comments on this line yet.
+ 153 • AWS Activate Terms & Conditions
No comments on this line yet.
+ 154 • AWS Credits — Eligible Services
No comments on this line yet.
+ 155 • Amazon Bedrock Supported Models
No comments on this line yet.
+ 156 • AWS Activate Program Guide 2026 — Cloudvisor
No comments on this line yet.
+ 157 • $200K AWS Credits Guide — Cloudvisor
No comments on this line yet.