Over the past couple of years, we have piloted a program for early stage startups with free access to a selection of developer products that are high leverage for them. Last year, we launched version 2 of the startup program, which dramatically expanded the basket of products included.

While upgrading startups to the startup plan, I often get inquiries from startups that are fully bootstrapped and not affiliated with any accelerator program. Many of them, especially AI startups, are very promising and would benefit highly from the startup plan.

Typically, they also apply for the Workers Launchpad program, for whom semi-finalists can get upgraded to the startup plan as a benefit. But many of those startups would benefit from getting upgraded right away rather than wait for the review process for each cohort.

Starting today, AI startups no longer need an accelerator affiliation or an employee referral in order to qualify for the Startup Program.

How to get on the startup plan as an AI startup

Here’s what I need you to do if you are a founder of a bootstrapped AI startup. Create a Cloudflare account if you don’t have one, add a domain, and update the name servers.

Fill out this form with the email address associated with your Cloudflare account: form here. For accelerator, select “AI” from the dropdown menu. In the Comments section, include the following information:

• Indication that the startup has raised less than $3M USD (e.g., link to Crunchbase).
• Link to a landing page, pitch deck, or article that describes what the startup does. It should be apparent from these materials that the startup is an AI startup (e.g. mention LLMs if that’s what you’re using).
• Which Cloudflare developer products are you using.

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