I have no idea why people are saying this is common. There are plenty of cloud credits programs for startups from GCP, etc, but they are not funded by VCs, they are sales & marketing programs funded by the cloud vendors.
A small minority of VCs (AI Grant, a16z, and now YC) have been using their funds to help startups get access to GPUs specifically for the last year and a bit, but there's no need to do a similar thing for general cloud services where there is no shortage.
A small minority of VCs (AI Grant, a16z, and now YC) have been using their funds to help startups get access to GPUs specifically for the last year and a bit, but there's no need to do a similar thing for general cloud services where there is no shortage.