Santa Cruz Accelerates Announces AI Infrastructure Partner

Jul 31

Level Up Your Startup: Runpod Partners with Santa Cruz Accelerates

Runpod is proud to be the official AI infrastructure partner for Santa Cruz Works and the Santa Cruz Accelerates 2025 cohort. Together, we’re empowering the next wave of AI founders and researchers with access to powerful compute resources that help startups ship—not just pitch.

Santa Cruz Works (“SCW”) runs a mentor-led, no-equity accelerator rooted in the Central Coast of California. Their mission is simple: help early-stage companies bring real products to market. With over 50 startups accelerated and nearly 30 hitting major financial milestones, SCW has proven what focused, founder-first support can do.

To take their impact even further, SCW has teamed up with Runpod to launch a new Compute Credits Program—designed for AI founders ready to push the boundaries of what’s possible without breaking the bank.

Runpod provides GPU-first infrastructure built for speed, scale, and accessibility. Unlike general-purpose clouds, we’re purpose-built for model training, inference, and scalable deployment. Whether you’re an AI startup building the next big thing, a university researcher training massive models, or a robotics company needing real-time performance—Runpod gives you the power to go from training to production on your terms.

Through this partnership, eligible founders in the Santa Cruz Accelerates program can apply for free compute across three specialized tracks:

Track 1: H100 Power for Training
Supercharge your training with up to 1,000 FREE H100 GPU hours. Perfect for large-scale model training and compute-heavy experiments.
Track 2: Serverless Inference at Scale
Unlock up to 1,000,000 FREE Serverless requests—ideal for inference pipelines, APIs, and scalable AI apps ready to serve real users.
Track 3: Multi-Node Performance
Tackle complex workloads with up to 750 FREE multi-node H100 compute hours. Get the power of distributed compute for your most demanding tasks.

At Runpod, we believe in being opinionated but not overwhelming—giving builders a clear path from training to inference to deployment. We support the doers, the tinkerers, the startups who are heads-down building the future. That’s why SCW chose us—and we couldn’t be more excited to fuel what comes next.

Apply through Santa Cruz Works and explore how Runpod can help you level up your AI project today.

If you're building something GPU-hungry and mission-driven, apply to the accelerator or fill out this form (be sure to mention Santa Cruz Works on the referral form). Let’s build!