Google Opens Applications For AI First Accelerator 2025

Global tech giant Google has started accepting applications for its 2025 AI First accelerator for the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT).  

The ten-week program offers seed to Series A startups equity-free support and up to US$350,000 in Google cloud credits. Qualified startups will also receive mentoring, technical training, and access to industry events. Preference will be given to startups with a strong technical foundation, particularly those leveraging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence(AI).  

Founders will be paired with experts from Google and the industry to address the company's top technical challenges and grow their business. The accelerator will also include deep dives as well as workshops, and its offerings will focus on product design, customer acquisition, and leadership development for founders.

Participants will also receive strategic support on company and product strategy and technical project partnership. Startup founders will gain access to new products and tools from Google, and will be eligible to receive 30 days of free access to Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) Research Cloud Program, which aims to help companies accelerate their open-source machine learning research.

Google Cloud TPUs are AI accelerators that are custom-designed and optimized for the training and inference of AI models, and can be used for use cases like agents, code generation, media content generation, synthetic speech, vision services, recommendation engines, and personalization models, among other things. 

Eligible companies include startups that have demonstrated traction and are ideally positioned between the Seed and Series A stages. These companies should be building scalable products or services with a significant total addressable market and a defensible growth model. A key requirement for admission to the program is the commitment of the company’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and/or AI team leaders to actively participate in all required program sessions. 

The program brings together cohorts of 10 to 15 startups to address technical challenges and support business growth through a combination of remote and in-person sessions, one-on-one mentorship, group learning, and focused sprint projects. 

Previous program participants include Moroccan prenatal healthtech Deep Echo, Egyptian agritech Egrobots, Qatari AI-driven B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for physical and digital commerce, Enable, and the UAE’s AI-driven temperature-as-a service platform FortyGuard, among others.  

Applications for Google’s AI First Accelerator 2025 will close on June 16, 2025. The program will kick off in September, with graduation expected to take place in November, and a Demo Day scheduled for December 2025. Interested applicants can apply here.  

Pictured on image is a scene from an earlier Google program. Image courtesy Google.