Is there any way for another AI coding tool to find a place in the hearts of startup founders? It must compete with established options like Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini Code Assist, GitHub CoPilot, the many other AI-powered VSCode variants, and popular coding environments like Replit and Lovable.
Amazon is attempting to do just that by using a classic strategy: giving its tool away for free. The cloud giant announced it will grant qualified early-stage startups a free year of credits to its competitor, Kiro Pro+. AWS CEO Matt Garman made the announcement during his keynote speech at the re:Invent 2025 conference. These eligible startups can request free credits for up to 100 users.
However, there are important restrictions. Only startups that have secured venture capital funding from the pre-seed to Series B stages are eligible. While U.S.-based startups can apply, the offer is not available worldwide. Geographic restrictions exclude France, Germany, Italy, much of South America, and naturally, trade-sanctioned countries. All applications must be received by December 31.