Find grants for your startups every week

Grants, startup credits, and other non-dilutive funding give a young company money without asking for equity, and ZeroCrew built this weekly search because finding the right program takes more time than a company with zero employees has. The money sits in government programs, innovation agencies, and cloud credit offers.

SBIR.gov describes the US SBIR and STTR programs as non-dilutive funding, with 0% equity or IP ownership taken by the government, as of October 2026. ZeroCrew reads that as the appeal of the whole category: a founder who wins a grant or a credit program keeps the company, and the main cost is the time spent finding the right program and applying.

ZeroCrew's answer to the time it takes to find grants is a weekly search by an AI agent. A Grok Bot routine looks every Monday for open grants, credit programs, and other non-dilutive funding that fit your startups, skips anything you can't apply for, and sends the five best fits, nearest deadline first. You still read each official page and apply yourself.

Why is finding startup grants by hand so hard?

Finding startup grants by hand is hard because every program sits on its own portal, with its own eligibility rules and its own deadline style. ZeroCrew opened the official pages of five grant and credit programs in October 2026 and found five different sets of rules on who can apply and when.

The number of grant portals adds up fast, even inside one country. SBIR.gov says the US SBIR and STTR programs are funded through 11 participating federal agencies, and each agency administers its own program within guidelines set by Congress, as of October 2026. ZeroCrew counts that as 11 agencies, each with its own topics and dates, for one program family, before a founder looks at state grants, cloud credits, or programs abroad.

Grant eligibility rules differ by program, and a wrong guess wastes time and money. Grants.gov's eligibility page, opened in October 2026, tells applicants to read the eligibility section of each notice of funding opportunity, because an applicant who isn't legally eligible wastes time and money on an application that can't receive the grant. ZeroCrew wrote that check into the weekly prompt: country, company type, stage, and deadline.

Grant deadlines can be rolling or fixed, and some programs use both. The EIC Accelerator page, opened in October 2026, says short proposals can go in at any time and are batched every first Tuesday of the month, while full proposals, for applicants whose short proposal got a GO, go to fixed dates; the last listed 2026 date is November 4, 2026. ZeroCrew's routine lists its five best fits nearest deadline first, so a fixed date stays in view.

The table below comes from ZeroCrew reading five official program pages in October 2026, and it shows how far the rules spread between government grants and cloud credit programs. Each row shows who can apply and the timing, per the program's own page.

Program	Who can apply, per its page	Timing
US SBIR and STTR	US small businesses with fewer than 500 employees	Set by each of the 11 participating agencies
EIC Accelerator	Startups and SMEs in EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe; UK applicants grant only	Short proposals any time; full proposals, after a GO, on fixed 2026 dates
Innovate UK funding opportunities	Set per opportunity, such as UK registered businesses	An opening date and a closing date for each opportunity
AWS Activate	Pre-Series B, founded in the last 10 years, AWS account on a Paid Tier Plan	Online application, with a reply in 5 to 10 business days
Google for Startups Cloud Program	Pre-Seed to Series A for funded tiers; a Start tier for startups founded in the past 2 years	Online application, with an email reply in 5 to 7 days

How does a weekly grant search work?

A weekly grant search is one agent run with one job: search, filter, rank, and report. ZeroCrew's version runs as a Grok Bot routine, which the Grok Bot docs (October 2026) describe as telling one Bot when to run a workflow on a schedule. Grok Bot routines run in the cloud while your laptop is closed.

Each weekly run of the grant search follows the same five steps. ZeroCrew wrote the steps into the prompt on this page, so every Monday's report has the same shape, whatever programs turn up, and one week compares cleanly with the last:

1. Search for open grants, startup credit programs, and other non-dilutive funding that fit each startup's country, company type, stage, and sector.
2. Drop anything you aren't eligible for, and anything on your list of programs already applied to.
3. For each match, note the name, amount, deadline, why you fit, effort to apply, and the link to the official program page.
4. Pick the five best fits and list them nearest deadline first.
5. Only research: never start, fill in, or submit an application, and if nothing new fits, say so in one line.

The weekly grant shortlist lands in the Grok Bot chat on your phone or desktop every Monday. ZeroCrew chose a weekly rhythm for grants because Innovate UK's funding opportunities each have an opening and a closing date weeks apart, and a weekly check leaves time to read the rules before a deadline. A quiet week gets one line, so the weekly grant report never pads itself with weak matches.

Which tools do you need for a weekly grant search?

A weekly grant search needs one tool: an AI agent that runs on a schedule and can browse the web. ZeroCrew built this use case on Grok Bot, which the Grok Bot docs (October 2026) say works on a persistent cloud computer with a browser, filesystem, and terminal.

Step	Tool	What it does here	Cost as of October 2026
Search, check, rank, and send every Monday	Grok Bot	Browses official pages and posts the five best fits in chat	Included on The X Subscription Premium ($30 a month or $300 a year), Super, and Ultra

Grok Bot does every step of the weekly grant search. ZeroCrew's Grok Bot page describes AI agents, called Bots, that sign in to your apps and websites, keep going after you close your laptop, and save a workflow you show them as a routine they can repeat.

The cost of Grok Bot is the plan behind it. According to the X Subscription pricing page (last updated October 11, 2026), Grok Bot is included on Premium at $30 a month or $300 a year, Super at $100 a month, and Ultra at $200 a month, while Plus doesn't include it. ZeroCrew notes that Bot usage draws from the seat's shared weekly usage pool.

Some grant portals ask for a human step, and Grok Bot respects that. The Grok Bot FAQ (October 2026) says a site can block automation or show a CAPTCHA, and the Bot hands those steps to you. ZeroCrew's weekly search only reads program pages and never starts an application, so a portal login can wait until you decide to apply.

Every {Monday}, search for open grants, startup credit programs and other non-dilutive funding that fit my startups: {startup names and one line on what each does}, incorporated in {countries and company types}, at {stage}, in {sectors}. Skip anything we're not eligible for (check the country, company type, stage and deadline) and anything I've already applied to: {programs already applied to}. For each match, give the name, the amount, the deadline, why we fit, the effort to apply and the link to the official program page. Pick the 5 best fits and list them nearest deadline first. Only research: never start, fill in, or submit an application. If nothing new fits this week, say so in one line.

Paste the prompt below into a chat with a new Grok Bot, fill in your startups, countries and company types, stage, sectors, and the programs you've already applied to, then ask the Bot to save the search as a weekly routine. ZeroCrew kept every placeholder, so one prompt fits any country, any day, and any number of startups.

How do you set up the weekly grant search?

Setting up the weekly grant search takes six steps, and ZeroCrew wrote each one from the Grok Bot docs, opened in October 2026. Start with a one-time run, because the Grok Bot docs advise making a task reliable first, then saving the method as a skill, and only then automating it.

1. Choose a plan that includes Grok Bot, such as The X Subscription Premium, and install the Grok Bot app on your desktop or phone.
2. Create a Bot for funding, paste the prompt, fill in every placeholder, and run it once as a normal task.
3. Read the first report and correct anything wrong, such as a missed country rule.
4. Ask the Bot to save the method as a skill, then to run the skill as a routine every Monday morning.
5. Open the routine and check When to run, which shows the saved schedule in words, and confirm the time zone in Settings, under Bot, labeled Timezone.
6. If the routine shows Test, open the routine on desktop and choose Test to run it once now. The Grok Bot docs say a new routine waits for its next scheduled time, and a test run does real work and spends usage.

What should you check before you trust the grant list?

Trust the weekly grant list only after you check each match on the program's official page. ZeroCrew treats the Bot's list as leads, not a decision: an agent can misread a country rule or an old deadline, and Grants.gov's eligibility page says each notice of funding opportunity defines its own eligibility requirements.

On the first few runs, ZeroCrew suggests checking these points against each program's official page before you leave the routine on its own, because one wrong rule in the prompt repeats every Monday until you fix it, and the Bot can't tell it's wrong:

• The link opens the official program page, not an article about the program.
• The deadline, amount, and time zone match the official page today.
• Your country, company type, and stage appear in the program's own eligibility section.
• Programs on your applied list stay off the report.

Keep Grok Bot on grant research and never let it apply for you. ZeroCrew's prompt tells the Bot to research only and never start, fill in, or submit an application, because a grant application is a formal statement about your company, and the EIC Accelerator page (October 2026) says an applicant may submit only one EIC Accelerator application at a time. You write and submit each application yourself, under your own name.

How does ZeroCrew help you pick the tools for each step?

The result you want is a weekly funding search that runs on tools you trust, and ZeroCrew helps you choose them. ZeroCrew's personal agents page lists personal agents that work across your apps on their own, ranked by real demand as of October 2026, so you can compare Grok Bot with Manus, Lindy, and others.

Each tool page on ZeroCrew summarizes what public posts say about the tool. ZeroCrew's Grok Bot page, as of October 2026, sums up nine public posts from Reddit, Hacker News, and Indie Hackers, read by ZeroCrew and checked by a second AI model, and lists praise such as automating multi-step business workflows and coordinating teams of Bots.

Your agent can search ZeroCrew's directory on its own. ZeroCrew's public MCP server at https://zerocrew.ai/api/mcp/public has tools to search the directory, read a tool's page, list roles, and list the tools for a job, so an agent that supports MCP can suggest an alternative when a step stops fitting. ZeroCrew's MCP servers list shows the directory's tools that have an MCP server.

If you'd rather hand the setup to someone, ZeroCrew's AI agent setup picks the tools, sets them up, and keeps them running, with a reply within one business day. ZeroCrew says it has researched 152 AI tools as of October 2026, so the agents behind your funding search come from a list already checked for companies with no employees.