KYE™ for Startups™
Governance credits for the AI startups building the future.
KYE™ for Startups™ is an early-stage credit program — the same idea as AWS Activate or Stripe for Startups, applied to AI governance. Qualifying AI startups get KYE Protocol™ governance credits so they can prove every consequential AI action from day one: admissibility checks, signed Evidence Packs™, and Replay-Proof™ a regulator can verify from your published keys alone.
KYE™ for Startups™: side by side
Demo dataYou learn: How the options differ, criterion by criterion. You can: Pick a column to light it.
| Seed / Pre-Seed | 5,000 USD | 12 months | Under 3,000,000 USD raised · under 3 years old · 25 or fewer employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | 25,000 USD | 12 months | Under 15,000,000 USD raised · under 5 years old · 100 or fewer employees |
| Accelerator / Partner-Referred | 25,000 USD + cohort uplift | 12 months | Partner-gated — admitted via an accredited accelerator or KYE™ partner referral |
How this widget is built
- Demonstrates
- Comparison
- Components
- The options this page compares
- The criteria it compares them on
- Flow
- Each criterion across the options, as the page sets it out. Architecture diagram
- Used on
- /startups/: On this page, after its opening.
Three credit tiers
Credit list values and eligibility bands below are the launch defaults and are adjustable by KYE Protocol™. Admission is application-reviewed through the same Universal Engagement Rail every KYE™ engagement uses — meeting the ceilings qualifies you to apply; it does not auto-grant credits.
| Tier | Credit (list value) | Duration | Eligibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed / Pre-Seed | 5,000 USD | 12 months | Under 3,000,000 USD raised · under 3 years old · 25 or fewer employees |
| Series A | 25,000 USD | 12 months | Under 15,000,000 USD raised · under 5 years old · 100 or fewer employees |
| Accelerator / Partner-Referred | 25,000 USD + cohort uplift | 12 months | Partner-gated — admitted via an accredited accelerator or KYE™ partner referral |
What the credit covers — and what it does not
We are deliberately honest about scope so there are no surprises at renewal.
- Covered: metered KYE™ governance usage. Your credit offsets the metered KYE Protocol™ governance you consume — Purpose Permission™ admissibility checks, Evidence Pack™ sealing, Replay-Proof™, and audit-chain WORM appends — throughout the credit term.
- Not covered: third-party costs. The credit does not cover costs billed by anyone other than KYE Protocol™ — your own Cloudflare account, Stripe processing fees, or your LLM provider bills. Those stay on your own accounts.
- Non-transferable. Credits are bound to the qualifying company. They cannot be sold, assigned, or moved to another entity.
- Governance-evidence-required. The program is a dogfooding partnership: while on credits, you run KYE™ the way it is meant to be run — every governed action emits the constitutional evidence family. That is exactly the governance posture the credit exists to seed.
- No cash value. Unused credit at the end of the term does not roll over, accrue cash, or convert to a refund. We will remind you before it lapses.
Why we can be generous
KYE Protocol™ runs edge-native. A governed product costs us roughly 0.71 to 4.55 USD per tenant per month in real edge spend (about 0.000023 USD per governed action). So a generous list-value credit is, in real cost-to-serve terms, a small investment in seeding the next generation of provably-governed AI companies — and an honest one, because the credit is the real governance, not a discount coupon.
How to apply
One intake surface, the same Universal Engagement Rail every KYE™ engagement uses.
- 1. Apply. Start your application → and tell us your stage, capital raised, age, and headcount.
- 2. Review. We review against the tier eligibility bands and confirm your fit. Accelerator / partner-referred applicants come in through their cohort or referrer.
- 3. Activate. On approval your credit activates for 12 months and your tenant is provisioned. With your consent, you can be listed as a KYE™ adopter in the public directory.
- Run an accelerator or fund? Talk to us about a partner-referred cohort band for your portfolio.
Canonical KYE™ surfaces referenced on this page: Evidence Pack™ · KYE Protocol™ · Purpose Permission · Universal Engagement Rail.