[metadata]
description: If you can build a web app, you can build a robot. $10K in platform credits for qualifying startups, plus engineering office hours and a stack that scales from prototype to fleet without a rewrite.
og:description: If you can build a web app, you can build a robot. $10K in platform credits for qualifying startups, plus engineering office hours and a stack that scales from prototype to fleet without a rewrite.
og:title: Viam for Startups | Build Your Robot Startup on Viam
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twitter:description: If you can build a web app, you can build a robot. $10K in platform credits for qualifying startups, plus engineering office hours and a stack that scales from prototype to fleet without a rewrite.
twitter:title: Viam for Startups | Build Your Robot Startup on Viam
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[content]
Viam for Startups | Build Your Robot Startup on Viam
PLATFORM
OVERVIEW
Fleet Management
AI & Data
Control & Motion
Security
SOLUTIONS
SURFACE FINISHING
FIBERGLASS SANDING
DOCS
Resources
Viam 101
Viam 102
Customer Stories
Blog
Github
Modular Registry
Sign in
Request demo
Viam for Startups
Build your robot startup on Viam.
Viam for Startups helps early-stage robotics and hardware companies build and scale on Viam without infrastructure cost being a barrier.
Apply
Viam is built for software engineers building for the physical world. Write in languages you know. Connect any hardware. Prototype fast. Scale without a rewrite.
Benefits
$30,000 in platform credits
Don't burn your seed round on infrastructure. Credits are distributed as $2,500/month over 12 months — covering your machines, data sync, and fleet management from day one through your first year.
Dedicated time with Viam Engineers
Scheduled time with the engineers who built the platform. Bring your architecture questions, your roadmap, your hardest technical decisions. Proactive help, not reactive support.
Direct access to Viam's Forward Deployed Engineering team via Slack
Not a ticket queue. Not a chatbot. We set up a shared Slack channel so you're always one message away from someone who can actually help.
Apply
Eligibility Criteria
To qualify for the Viam for Startups program, companies must meet all of the following requirements:
Building a robotics or hardware-focused product or service
Series C or earlier stage
Founded within the last five years
Have a valid website and business email address
Not currently a Viam enterprise customer under contract
Have not previously participated in the program
Meeting the eligibility criteria does not guarantee acceptance. Viam may approve, deny, suspend, or remove participants from the program in its sole discretion.
Most stacks break between 1 and 10 machines. Viam doesn't.
Your prototype code runs your fleet. No rewrites, no migrations, no rebuilding at scale.
Prototype:
Idea → demo in days. No custom infrastructure.
Pilot:
1 → 50 machines. Same config, no rewrite.
Fleet:
50+ machines. OTA updates, monitoring, and rollbacks built in.
Read more about security
Built on Viam. Shipping in the real world.
Cut time-to-market by 50%. Deploy software updates 90% faster. Scaled from prototypes to thousands of robots, without rebuilding the stack.
Built a multimodal AI cooking assistant from scratch — and shipped it — without a traditional robotics engineer on the founding team.
Shipped an AI-powered grill in under a year while the Viam platform handled authentication, OTA updates, model deployment, and data pipelines.
UBS Arena built an AI-powered fan experience feature in 10 days using existing cameras and no new hardware.
Open source. No black boxes.
The core RDK is open source on
GitHub
. No black boxes, no vendor lock-in. Use the Viam Registry for instant access to drivers and ML models, and keep your proprietary logic private.
The Startup Stack: Custom vs. Viam
Feature
The Custom Headache
Viam
Hardware Integration
Hunting for 5-year-old GitHub repos and debugging C++ build errors for every sensor.
JSON config. Declare your hardware, pull the driver from the Registry, and start coding.
AI/ML Deployment
Fighting CUDA drivers and "library hell" on the edge just to get a model to run.
Deploy PyTorch/TF models with a toggle. Call inference via a clean API.
OTA Updates
"The Golden SD Card" or brittle Ansible scripts. Praying the update doesn't brick the unit.
Push updates to one robot or the whole fleet. One-click rollbacks if things go sideways.
See the full comparison
Stop managing plumbing. Start building robots.
Create your free account and get your first machine online in minutes.
Apply
Read the docs
FAQ
Q: How do I apply?
Q: How do I apply?
A:
Apply directly through our
demo request form
, and select that you are interested in applying to Viam for Startups.
Q: Does it cost anything to get started?
Q: Does it cost anything
to get started?
A:
No. Viam is free to start: every account includes $5/month in free usage, no credit card required. The startup credits kick in on top of that once you’ve spoken with our team and qualified.
Q: How do the $30,000 in credits actually work?
Q: How do the $30,000 in
credits actually work?
A:
Eligible startups receive
$30,000 in Viam credits
— distributed as
$2,500 per month for 12 months
— applicable to all Viam usage for your bona fide robotics project. Credits do not roll over month to month; unused monthly credits expire at the end of each billing month. If you use more than the $2,500 per month, you will be responsible for paying the difference.
Q: What is the eligibility criteria?
Q: What is the eligibility criteria?
A:
To qualify for the Viam for Startups program, companies must meet all of the following requirements:
1. Building a robotics or hardware-focused product or service Series C or earlier stage
2. Founded within the last five years
3. Have a valid website and business email address
4. Not currently a Viam enterprise customer under contract
5. Have not previously participated in the program
Meeting the eligibility criteria does not guarantee acceptance. Viam may approve, deny, suspend, or remove participants from the program in its sole discretion.
Q: What if I’m using custom or niche hardware?
Q: What if I’m using custom
or niche hardware?
A:
If it has an API or a data sheet, it works on Viam. Our modular architecture allows you to write custom drivers in any of our supported languages (Python, Go, C++, etc.).
Q: Can I use Viam if I already have a stack built on ROS?
Q: Can I use Viam if I already
have a stack built on ROS?
A:
Yes. You don't have to rip and replace. Viam is designed to be interoperable; you can wrap existing ROS nodes and expose them as Viam resources. Many startups use Viam to handle the "hard parts" ROS doesn't solve smoothly: secure remote access, fleet-wide OTA updates, and data management.
Q: What happens if my robot loses Wi-Fi or LTE?
Q: What happens if my
robot loses Wi-Fi or LTE?
A:
Your robot keeps working. Viam is
local-first
. The viam-server binary caches your configuration and runs your logic on-device. If connectivity drops, your machine continues its mission. Any data you’ve configured for capture will queue locally and automatically sync to the Viam cloud once a connection is re-established.
Q: What is the latency overhead of the Viam RDK?
Q: What is the latency overhead
of the Viam RDK?
A:
Negligible for production use-cases. Because the Viam RDK runs natively on your hardware (at the "Edge"), all critical control loops and hardware interactions happen locally. We use gRPC for high-performance, low-latency communication between services. The cloud is only used for the control plane (management) and telemetry, never for your robot's real-time logic.
Q: Is my proprietary logic and data secure?
Q: Is my proprietary
logic and data secure?
A:
Your IP stays yours. Viam is SOC2 Type II compliant. We use a peer-to-peer architecture (WebRTC) to establish secure, encrypted tunnels between you and your robot, meaning your data doesn't even have to hop through our servers to be viewed. Additionally, Viam does
not
use your data to train our own models.
Additional Terms:
Credits are promotional credits only. They are not cash, stored value, gift cards, or prepaid services, and are not refundable, transferable, assignable, redeemable, or exchangeable for cash or other value.
Viam may approve, deny, suspend, or remove participants from the program in its sole discretion, and Viam may modify, suspend, cancel, or terminate the program in its entirety without notice to you.
Participation in the program and use of Viam services are subject to Viam’s applicable standard terms and policies, including Viam’s terms of service, privacy policy, acceptable use requirements, and any service-specific terms.
PLATFORM
Overview
Fleet Management
AI & Data
Control & Motion
Pricing
Security & Compliance
Request a demo
Solutions
Surface Finishing
Fiberglass Sanding
Customer stories
RESOURCES
Documentation
Viam 101
Viam 102
Blog
GitHub
Modular Registry
Systems Integrators
Manufacturing
Viam for Startups
Support
COMPANY
About Us
Careers
We're hiring!
Newsroom
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