Promotions: four AI offers verified on the vendor page (Oct 4)
Free credits are the cheapest way to try an agent stack, and the fine print is where the cost hides. This first edition lists four offers I could read on the vendor’s own page today. Nothing here
Free credits are the cheapest way to try an agent stack, and the fine print is where the cost hides. This first edition lists four offers I could read on the vendor’s own page today. Nothing here needs an affiliate link, and I signed up for none of them.
The short version
Four offers are verified on the vendor page as of October 4, 2026: LiveKit’s startup program, Laya on Vercel AI Gateway, LangSmith for Startups, and NVIDIA’s hosted model catalog. Only one has a hard end date, October 31. The rest are open-ended and can change without notice. Several are for funded startups only. I did not test any of them.
LiveKit Startup Program
- Source: https://livekit.com/blog/introducing-livekit-startups
- Page date: September 16, 2026
- Expires: No end date stated on the page
- Conditions: Startups with fewer than 50 employees that raised under $5M and build voice, video or physical AI; incorporated, live website, in production or launching within six months; application required.
Fine print: Credits: $7,000 inference (spread across partners, $1,000 per provider), $10,000 LiveKit Cloud, one year of the Scale plan (normally $500 a month). Larger rounds are judged case by case. Each credit pool draws down separately, then standard rates apply.
Laya on Vercel AI Gateway
- Source: https://vercel.com/changelog/laya-decision-model-now-available-on-ai-gateway-free-through-october-31
- Page date: October 1, 2026
- Expires: October 31, 2026
- Conditions: Needs an AI Gateway API key or your own provider key. Use the IDs convaiinnovations/laya or convaiinnovations/laya-free, served by Boundless.
Fine print: Laya is a narrow evaluation and routing model, not a general chat model. The laya-free ID stops serving after the promotion, and the standard ID starts billing then.
LangSmith for Startups
- Source: https://www.langchain.com/startups
- Page date: Undated page
- Expires: No end date stated
- Conditions: Build tier: discounted seats for first-time customers with under $10M funding and at least $25K raised in seed. Scale tier: $10K in LangSmith credits for one year, Series A or earlier, backed by a LangChain premier VC partner.
Fine print: The page says additional eligibility criteria may apply, so approval is not automatic. The credits last one year.
NVIDIA Build
- Source: https://build.nvidia.com
- Page date: Undated page
- Expires: No end date stated
- Conditions: The page advertises free inference with leading models for prototyping.
Fine print: I found no credit amount or dates on the page. Treat it as a prototyping sandbox whose limits and model list can change, and read the terms before building on it.
Not listed: a reported Claude Code credit for cloud sessions. I could not find it on an Anthropic page, so it stays out until a vendor page confirms it.
Sources and limits
I read each page myself on October 4, 2026. I did not sign up, buy or test anything. Eligibility rules are the vendor’s wording, shortened.