Is there any way for another AI coding tool to worm it’s way into the hearts of startup founders — and past Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini Code Assist, GitHub CoPilot, the many other AI-wrapped VSCode forks, and vibe-coding phenoms like Replit and Lovable?

Amazon wants to try using the tried-and-true method of giving its tool away for free.

The cloud giant says it will grant qualified early-stage startups a free year of credits to its competitor, Kiro Pro+ , AWS CEO Matt Garman announced during his keynote speech at the re:Invent 2025 conference. These startups can request free credits for up to 100 users.

But there are restrictions. Only startups that have secured VC funding ranging from pre-seed to Series B funding are eligible. U.S.-based startups are eligible, but the offer is

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