Rise Start-Up Program

The Rise start-up program is designed to empower early-stage companies to build and scale in the cloud. Participants receive infrastructure credits that can be applied to a wide range of cost-effective cloud services — including virtual machines, GPU instances, and cloud storage. Whether you’re onboarding your first test user or serving your millionth customer, the program helps reduce operational costs while supporting innovation and growth.

• You must be an early-stage company that is fewer than seven years old.
• Revenue and company size are factors. We are looking for at least one of the following: paid employees outside of founders; active users that are non-friends/family/investors; generating initial revenue.
• Defined plan on how you will scale your infrastructure as the company grows.
• Plans include Akamai Cloud as one of the primary providers of your infrastructure.

Please review the Rise membership qualifications above and then complete the application process. If your business qualifies, one of our team members will schedule an interview with you to review your application. Following acceptance to the program, your credits are added to your Akamai Cloud account and the next steps are established with the program coordinator.

Yes. Before applying for the Rise start-up program, you must create a new account for your start-up with 1) the corporate email address associated with your company domain and 2) a valid credit card. For security reasons, applicants must include a working website and a matching corporate email address using a domain aligned with the corporate entity’s web property. Please also make sure the account gets designated as a commercial account via having a corporate entity in the Company field.

We welcome all start-ups, but we prioritize SaaS, media, and gaming start-ups. Managed hosting providers, MSPs, system integrators, and other resellers are not eligible. If you are a reseller, please navigate to our Partner page for the application, and they can work with you on your eligibility.

 If you exceed the monthly credit limit, we will charge you for the additional usage for that month.

First-year credits and unused credits do not roll over month to month or subsequent years. Rise is a three-year program with discounts offered in years two and three.