Trelis AI Grants
Quarterly $500 equity-free grants for individuals advancing open AI models
What you get from Trelis AI Grants for free
Overview
Trelis Research runs a quarterly grant program for individuals working on open AI models. Each quarter it awards $500 grants to selected applicants, with a parallel $10,000 SAFE investment track for projects that incorporate (Delaware C Corp preferred).
What You Get
- $500 grant per quarter, paid to an individual.
- Equity-free - Trelis states it does not claim any rights to the grantee's work.
- Optional $10,000 investment (SAFE) track for incorporated projects.
- Payout by bank transfer to supported countries, PayPal or Stripe invoice, or RunPod GPU credits as a last resort.
How to Get Started
Apply through the form linked from the Trelis AI Grants page. Decisions and offers are made on a rolling basis throughout the quarter, and completed cohorts are published on the page (the most recent listed are 1Q2026 and 2Q2026).
Before you claim
- Other: An active GitHub or GitLab account
- Verification: Fill out the application form (decisions within 30 days)
- Verification: Selected applicants complete a 15-minute interview
- Verification: Grantees invoice Trelis LTD and submit title, tweet-style summary, and 500-word summary on completion
- Who can claim: Individuals of any age and location with an active GitHub or GitLab account; application and interview required.
- Payment card: Not needed.
- Account: Sign up with the provider.
Key limits
- $500 grants awarded per quarter, on a rolling basis
- Applicants need an active GitHub or GitLab account
- Grantees invoice Trelis LTD and submit a 500-word completion summary
- Separate $10,000 investment track requires a corporate entity (Delaware C Corp preferred), typically via SAFE
- Payment via bank transfer preferred, then PayPal/Stripe, or RunPod GPU credits as last resort
Eligibility
- Applicants must be individuals of any age and location with an active GitHub or GitLab account.
- Eligible work spans training, fine-tuning, inference, and deployment tooling that progresses open AI models - for example LoRA/QLoRA fine-tunes, quantization and serving frameworks, evaluation harnesses, or agent frameworks built on open models.
- Applications are rolling, and Trelis says to expect a response within 30 days of applying; shortlisted candidates are invited to a 15-minute interview during the quarter.
- Grant recipients submit a headline, a 280-character tweet-style summary, and a 500-word project summary; Trelis may publicise the recipient and project with permission.
As the provider states it on the date shown above. The provider decides who qualifies.
Not eligible? 3 alternatives open to everyone
This offer is only for startups. These coding offers have no student, startup, nonprofit or country requirement.
- CodeRabbit Free for Open Source — Free AI code reviews and PR triage for public open-source reposcoderabbit.ai · Verified · No card
- Freebuff Free Coding Agents — Free coding agents across CLI, desktop, web, cloud, and chat, funded by adsfreebuff.com · Verified · No card
- Hugging Face ZeroGPU Free GPU Access on Spaces — ZeroGPU dynamically allocates NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs to Gradiohuggingface.co · Verified · No card
Check everything you qualify for — five questions, no signup.
History
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