If you're a student, you can get most of the tools practitioners use in production for free. Here is the high-value set we'd point a younger version of ourselves to: credits, compute, courses, and a way into the community. Start with the ones marked, then go build something.

Microsoft's student programs are one of the best free on-ramps to building and shipping AI.

• Azure for Students

  Free Azure credit with no credit card required, plus a set of always-free services. Spin up AI models, databases, and compute to build real projects.

  Open program →
• GitHub Student Developer Pack

  The big one. Free GitHub Copilot, plus dozens of partner tools and credits bundled for verified students. If you do one thing on this page, do this.

  Open program →
• Microsoft Learn

  Free, structured learning paths on AI, Azure AI Foundry, and agents, with hands-on modules. Pairs well with a student certification.

  Open program →
• Microsoft Imagine Cup

  Global student startup competition. Build an AI project, get mentorship, and compete for funding and Azure credits.

  Open program →

NVIDIA is where you learn the compute and training stack behind production AI, much of it free.

• NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute

  Hands-on, self-paced courses on deep learning, LLMs, and accelerated computing. Some courses are free; many offer student access and certificates.

  Open program →
• NVIDIA for Students & Educators

  Teaching kits, course materials, and academic programs. A direct line into the tooling practitioners use to train and serve models at scale.

  Open program →
• NVIDIA Developer Program

  Free to join. SDKs, CUDA, NeMo, and the libraries behind production AI, plus technical docs and community.

  Open program →
• NVIDIA Inception

  Building a startup out of your research? Inception offers credits, tooling, and go-to-market support for early-stage AI companies.

  Open program →

The rest of what you need to go from learning to shipping. All free or free to start.

• Free GPUs: Colab & Kaggle

  Train and run models for free. Google Colab and Kaggle Notebooks both give free GPU time, enough to ship your first real AI project.

  Open →
• Hugging Face

  Free courses, open models, datasets, and Spaces to host demos. The fastest way to go from tutorial to a working model.

  Open →
• DeepLearning.AI

  Short, practical courses on LLMs, RAG, agents, and evals. Many are free to audit and built with the labs shipping this tech.

  Open →
• fast.ai

  A free, code-first deep learning course that has launched a lot of careers. Practical from lesson one.

  Open →

• The Field Guide (free PDF)

  A guided reading path through production AI. No email required. Start here if you don't know where to start.

• The reading library

  Our curated, canonical reading list for AI practitioners. Organized by topic. Always free.

• Free meetup entry

  Our Boston meetups are free, and students are especially welcome. Two practitioner talks a night, real production stories. Come learn and meet people who hire.

• Student lightning talks

  Shipped something interesting in a class or side project? We make room for student lightning talks. Pitch us.

The AI Runtime is a community of AI practitioners shipping to production. The free weekly newsletter shares what they learned, the fastest way to pick up what classes don't teach yet.

Student offer we should add? Email info@theairuntime.com. We keep this page current.