Cloud & InfrastructureMicrosoft for Startups
Founder-grade cloud capital, unlocked through our Microsoft for Startups Investor Network partner.
Microsoft for Startups is Microsoft's program for venture-scale software companies, and the Azure credits inside it are the single largest piece of capital in the Arsenal. It is unlocked through Turing Venture Capital, our sister fund within the same group and a Microsoft for Startups Investor Network partner. That partnership lets us refer the startups we work with for up to $200,000 in Azure credits, well beyond what a startup would secure on its own, along with Microsoft's product bundle: Microsoft 365, GitHub Enterprise, Visual Studio Enterprise, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform, plus access to Azure AI Foundry and its catalog of more than 11,000 models. The credits cover the layer most early teams worry about first, the cloud bill, so more of the budget goes into building the product instead of paying a cloud provider. Underneath the program sits Azure itself: managed Kubernetes, serverless compute, managed databases, and Azure OpenAI Service, the same enterprise-grade platform that runs workloads from seed-stage startups to the Fortune 500. Access is subject to Microsoft eligibility and approval, and the offer is reserved for companies we work with directly.
Founders and engineering teams building a venture-scale software product who want their cloud infrastructure funded as they build. The best fit is a company early enough to still be choosing its cloud, planning to build AI features on Azure OpenAI or Azure AI Foundry, and able to meet Microsoft for Startups eligibility. Because the credits are unlocked through Turing Venture Capital, this is reserved for startups we work with directly rather than a public, self-serve link.
Up to $200,000 in Azure credits, unlocked through our sister fund Turing Venture Capital.
Subject to partner eligibility criteria. Savings estimates reflect maximum potential value.
Microsoft for Startups in depth.
Managed Kubernetes with AKS
Azure Kubernetes Service handles control plane management, auto-scaling, node upgrades, and integration with Azure networking and identity, so engineering teams can run containerized workloads without managing the Kubernetes infrastructure itself. AKS integrates with Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions for CI/CD, making it a common choice for teams standardizing on a container-based deployment model.
Azure OpenAI Service
Azure OpenAI provides access to OpenAI's GPT, Embeddings, DALL-E, and Whisper models through a private Azure endpoint with enterprise security controls, data residency options, and no data training on customer inputs. This makes it the default choice for software teams that need to build on frontier AI models while satisfying enterprise compliance requirements.
Managed Database Services
Azure offers fully managed versions of SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Cosmos DB (multi-model NoSQL), and Redis Cache, each with automated backups, high availability, scaling, and patching handled by the platform. Teams choose these over self-managed databases to reduce operational burden on the engineering team.
Azure Active Directory and Identity
Azure AD (now Microsoft Entra ID) provides centralized identity management, SSO, conditional access, and B2B/B2C identity services that integrate across both Azure services and thousands of third-party SaaS applications. For enterprises already using Microsoft 365, this is the simplest path to unified identity across cloud and SaaS.
Global CDN and Networking
Azure's global network of 60+ regions and built-in CDN (Azure Front Door) lets teams deploy close to their users, route traffic intelligently across regions, and cache static assets at the edge without managing separate CDN infrastructure. This matters for products with international user bases where latency and availability directly affect user experience.
This offer sits at the intersection of three parts of the same group: Turing Venture Capital, the Microsoft for Startups Investor Network partner that unlocks the credits; BearPlex, which designs and builds the product on Azure; and Microsoft, which funds the infrastructure. Azure integrates natively with GitHub, Visual Studio, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform, so the product bundle that comes with the program plugs straight into the same stack the credits pay for.
Common use cases.
Deploying containerized microservices with managed Kubernetes
Engineering teams use AKS to run their containerized application stack with auto-scaling, rolling deployments, and built-in monitoring through Azure Monitor, without building or maintaining the Kubernetes control plane. The integration with Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions means CI/CD pipelines can deploy directly to AKS without additional orchestration tooling.
Building AI-powered product features inside a compliant enterprise environment
Software teams building for enterprise customers use Azure OpenAI Service to integrate GPT or embedding models into their product because it provides the same models as OpenAI.com but within an Azure private endpoint with SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance and no customer data used for model training. This removes the blocker that enterprise procurement teams typically raise when evaluating AI features.
Migrating a Windows or SQL Server workload from on-premises to cloud
Organizations running legacy .NET applications or SQL Server databases on-premises use Azure's hybrid connectivity tools and Azure Migrate to lift and shift to Azure VMs or managed Azure SQL with minimal code changes. Microsoft's licensing benefits (Azure Hybrid Benefit) often make this significantly cheaper than equivalent workloads on other cloud providers.
Three steps to activate.
Check eligibility
Each partner maintains independent qualification criteria. We assess your profile and determine which offers you qualify for.
Schedule a briefing
Book a call with our partnerships team to discuss your stack requirements and walk through the activation process.
Activate credits
Once approved by the partner, credits are deployed to your account. Timelines vary by partner.
BearPlex maintains partnerships with leading technology providers to facilitate access to exclusive programs for our clients. All offers are subject to each partner's independent eligibility requirements, approval processes, and terms of service. Savings figures represent maximum potential value and may vary based on qualification, usage, and partner-specific criteria. BearPlex acts as a facilitation partner and does not guarantee approval or specific credit amounts. Offer availability and terms may change at the partner's discretion.
