Google Cloud announced on Tuesday a wide-ranging set of partnerships to attract Web3 startups to its cloud computing platform.
Expanding upon Google for Startups Cloud, an existing initiative that provides startups free credits to use the tech behemoth’s servers, among other perks, the new program will include specific benefits for emerging Web3 companies.
These include access to a set of grants from Aptos, Celo, Flow, the HBAR Foundation, Near, and the Solana Foundation, all of which have separately offered up $1 million—for a total of $6 million—to support Web3 startups building on Google Cloud. Nansen, a blockchain data analytics firm, has also pitched in, offering discounts to startups on its analytics products. And Alchemy, a Web3 developer platform, will provide members credits to the platform’s suite of services, mentorship, and priority access to its Web3 boot camp.
“Our new benefits give Web3 projects and startups the technology, community, and resources that they need to focus on innovation over infrastructure,” James Tromans, Google Cloud’s Web3 engineering director, and Ryan Kiskis, director of Google Cloud’s Startup Ecosystem, wrote in a post announcing the new effort.
Other perks include early access to Google Cloud’s Web3 products as well as priority review for Coinbase’s Base Ecosystem Fund, which supports projects planning to build on Base, the company’s recently announced layer-2 blockchain. (The cloud computing giant included a comprehensive list of partnerships in a blog post announcing the program.)
“From their perspective maybe it’s a low-risk one,” Andrew Thurman, a spokesperson for Nansen, told Fortune in reference to Google Cloud’s Web3 startup program. “They’re offering free Google Cloud credits and really just organizing as a nexus for many of these services and protocols. But it’s sort of undeniable that this is one of the bolder steps they’ve taken into the blockchain space.”
The program builds on more than a year of momentum from Google’s cloud computing arm as it looks to edge out Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, the other two titans of cloud computing, in attracting a growing field of Web3 developers to Google’s servers.
While Google Cloud took its first public step into Web3 in 2018 when it added datasets for Bitcoin and eventually other blockchains into BigQuery, a method for developers to ping large databases, it accelerated its Web3 strategy when it announced the creation of its own dedicated digital assets and Web3 engineering teams in 2022.
Since then, the cloud computing giant has announced a near-constant stream of partnerships with prominent crypto firms and blockchains, including Coinbase, BNB Chain, Celo, and Casper Labs.
It has also offered up its servers as validators, or computers that help secure and maintain blockchains, for the Sky Mavis, Solana, and Tezos blockchains.
And in October, it unveiled the Blockchain Node Engine, a streamlined method for developers to access and use blockchains on Google’s servers.
“Google’s partnership is crucial in realizing Web3’s potential,” Mo Shaikh, cofounder and CEO of Aptos Labs, said in a statement to Fortune.
