Microsoft pulls plug on generous Azure credit program for startups

Microsoft has retired its program that granted incorporated AI startups with a validated business plan up to $150,000 in Azure credits and replaced it with a two-track system. The Microsoft for Startups program, which Redmond was promoting at RSA in May, was generous and a good way to drive young companies with AI ideas onto …

[IGotOut]

Wow..

"Google for Startups Cloud Program is offering ....as well as advice from staffers"

Having worked with Google "Experts" think them as someone with a paper MCSE. They know their very particular subject, if it's done within very strict criteria and everything is going exactly to plan. Otherwise think as the less Chocolate Factory, more as Chocolate teapot.

[JessicaRabbit]

I see this as a good thing, less incentive to use Azure, less devs being forced to use Azure...

[Excused Boots]

It’s the good old ‘gateway’ drug plan isn't it? Offer free or low cost enticing offers, get the victims hooked and then pull the cheap offering! MS will know exactly how many SMEs will jump ship and how many either won’t have the skills or the inclination to jump ship. It’s a numbers game.

And no doubt that Google will do exactly the same when the beancounters tell them that the time is right.

[doublelayer]

No, that was the old thing. People who already signed up still get that massive Azure credit. People who hadn't signed up yet but counted on that always being an option when they were ready are the ones who lost out, and they never got to experience the "gateway drug"*. Your analogy is closer to what they used to be doing: give companies a lot of free credits in the hope that they'll need to spend even more than that and continue to do it with Azure. They're probably canceling that as investors no longer provide towers of cash to burn on AI training, so there's less return on that investment for Microsoft.

* As far as I know, that's also not what "gateway drug" means. A gateway drug is one that people use first, but then abandon in favor of something stronger. This would be more of a free sample or even a bait and switch if it worked the way you described.

[steviesteveo]

It's interesting as a signal that it wasn't paying off. I'd have thought getting startups committed to your infra was a license to print money once a few of them took off but this suggests that startups are even riskier than MS's modelling thought.

[powershift]

They are doing everyone a favor to steer clear.

[Nursing A Semi]

Deformed

This elephant has no trunk surely?

[airbrush]

They're quite good at tweaking their offering so that your visual studio credits don't quite fit your monthly spend while the bean counters would rather die than top up your credits even though it's a fraction of the cost to host via the corporate account.