Red Hat extends RHEL special offering to participants of Google for Startups Cloud Program

Building infrastructure from the ground up requires critical architecture decisions that determine how easily your business can scale. To help emerging companies build on a hardened, enterprise-grade foundation, Red Hat is offering a specialized 6-month trial of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for participants in the Google for Startups Cloud Program.

By standardizing on RHEL, growing businesses gain the stability, proactive security patching, and hybrid cloud consistency needed to move from early development to hyper-growth and production AI.

What the offer includes

Eligible startups receive software credits toward RHEL for Google Cloud. The offer provides:

• 6 months of technical support: Direct access to Red Hat support for RHEL for Google Cloud to help guide your deployment and troubleshoot issues.
• Hardened security and compliance: Pre-approved baselines, proactive threat prevention, and predictable patching to simplify early audit readiness.
• Google Cloud integration: Easy deployment and management directly through the Google Cloud console.

Who is eligible

To qualify for this special RHEL offering, your organization must meet the following criteria:

• Maintain active, verified status as a "Start Tier" member within the Google for Startups Cloud Program. Participants in The Open Accelerator, who are also in the Google for Startups Cloud Program, are automatically eligible for this offering as well.
• Be a new Red Hat customer.
• Provide a valid Google Billing ID and contact details for an authorized individual who can accept the Google Cloud Private Offer.

"Startups need the freedom to innovate rapidly without risking the architectural integrity of their applications. By bringing RHEL to the Google for Startups Cloud Program and participants of The Open Accelerator, we are providing founders with an enterprise-grade foundation from day one. Whether it’s building next-generation AI models or scaling cloud-native services, this collaboration helps startups transition from early development to hyper-growth with complete confidence." – Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president, The Open Accelerator

How to get started

1. Submit your details: Fill out the registration form with your organization’s info, Google Billing ID, and authorized point of contact.
2. Verification: Red Hat verifies your active status in the Google for Startups Cloud Program.
3. Receive your credit: Once approved, Red Hat allocates the trial offer directly to your specified Google Cloud account and sends an activation link.
4. Accept the offer: Log into your Google Cloud console, accept the private offer, and begin building.

Grounding early innovation in enterprise stability

Founders often face a false choice: move fast with ad-hoc systems today, or spend precious time engineering for enterprise compliance tomorrow. Standardizing on RHEL on Google Cloud can help eliminate this technical debt early, giving startups environment parity from development to production alongside the security baselines required by Fortune 500 customers. 

In fact, according to an IDC study sponsored by Red Hat, RHEL for Google Cloud delivers measurable operational speed and security, including:  

• Accelerated development velocity: Teams can experience 47% higher developer efficiency, a 37% faster time-to-market for new features, and a 238% increase in deployment frequency.  
• Streamlined operations: Google Cloud enabled rapid VM provisioning and elastic scaling, but RHEL ensured those workloads were deployed within consistent, hardened configurations. The result was improved utilization, reduced idle capacity, and lower support overhead.
• Hardened security and compliance: On average, organizations reported a 44% reduction in staff time required per audit and 59% of potential adverse events were prevented due to proactive alerts.
• Proven ROI: The IDC Business Value White Paper found that organizations leveraging RHEL on Google Cloud achieved a 305% 3-year return on investment, with the initial investment paying for itself in 8 months.

Join Red Hat and Google Cloud experts for a live conversation on how standardizing on RHEL transforms your infrastructure from a bottleneck into a growth engine.