Hans Ibarra, a founder building an AI-voice startup, has found himself on the receiving end of a big opportunity: Top artificial-intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and others desperate to win his business are ramping up discounts. Across Silicon Valley, startup founders like Ibarra are enjoying a wave of computing credits and fielding competing offers from AI-model makers racing to land new enterprise customers. Cursor, the AI-coding company bought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, offered a 75% discount through July 5. The offers from growing AI-sales armies at companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are so rich that some early-stage startup founders say they won’t need to raise money as soon as they expected, and others have been able to play AI companies off one another. Startups have received offers that in some cases amounted to more than $3 million in credits from multiple companies for cloud computing and tokens, the central units used to measure and charge for AI usage, founders say. That is the size of the median U.S. seed round, according to PitchBook.

Full report : OpenAI, Anthropic, and other top AI labs are offering startups token credits, promotions, and one-time bonuses as they battle for lasting streams of B2B revenue.