How to Apply to Conviction Embed in 2026

To apply to Conviction Embed, submit the form at embed.conviction.com/apply with a founder intro video of two minutes or less. Admission is rolling across the application month. Accepted teams get $250,000 on an uncapped, no-discount MFN SAFE plus more than $1.2 million in compute credits, per Conviction.

Embed is built around AI-native, or "Software 3.0", companies, so a general-purpose SaaS pitch is the wrong application to send (Conviction Embed). Applications are open for the seventh cohort, admitted on a rolling basis across the application month, with a planned class of 10 to 12 companies (Conviction Embed).

The cheque is the smallest part of the offer. The named credit stack totals at least $1.2 million, or 4.8x the $250,000 investment (Conviction Embed).

How to apply to Conviction Embed in 2026: the eight steps

1. Read Conviction's Startup Ideas page first. It states the AI theses the fund is chasing, while saying explicitly that you do not need to pursue one of the listed ideas (Conviction Embed).
2. Open the form at embed.conviction.com/apply and answer the founder, company, and progress questions concisely.
3. Record the founder intro video. Two minutes maximum (Embed application). Show the product running, not the market size.
4. Answer "what have you built and shipped" with artifacts. The form asks this directly (Embed application). Link repos, live URLs, and ship dates.
5. Name competitors and the reason you win, plus a "why now" that is specific to a model capability that landed recently (Embed application).
6. State one target outcome for the end of the batch. The form asks what you want to hit by then (Embed application). Pick a number you can be held to.
7. Disclose users, revenue, prior fundraising, and current fundraising (Embed application). Zeros are fine. Vagueness is not.
8. Attach the optional demo video and PDF deck. Both are marked optional but recommended (Embed application). Attach them.

What the $250K uncapped MFN SAFE actually costs you

This AI startup program's $250K SAFE does not buy a fixed percentage of your company. Embed invests $250,000 through an uncapped, no-discount MFN SAFE, or at the same price as a financing round you completed in the previous 60 days (Conviction Embed).

Y Combinator's Uncapped MFN SAFE has no valuation cap and no discount, so the cheque does not determine ownership at signing (Y Combinator). The MFN clause lets the investor elect better terms you later offer other SAFE investors, such as a lower cap or a larger discount (Cooley GO).

Do not model this as "$250K for X%". Model it as unpriced money whose cost you set later. The trap is issuing a capped SAFE to some angel three months in: MFN pulls that cap back to Embed (Cooley GO). Keep every subsequent instrument clean until you price a round.

Embed compute credits are worth more than the cheque

All four figures come from Conviction's Embed page, and the $1.2 million total excludes the early Mistral model access listed separately (Conviction Embed).

Do not put $1.2 million on a line in your model. Credits extend runway on one cost, inference and hosting, and only if your stack already runs on those vendors. If you are committed to a provider outside that list, the effective value is a fraction of the headline.

What the Conviction Embed cohort selects for

A 10 to 12 company class means the screen is closer to a fund's investment decision than an accelerator's intake. Conviction describes selection in its first batches as below 1% (Conviction Embed).

• Technical velocity and pragmatism: Conviction says it gravitates toward technical teams that build with velocity and pragmatism, while having backed engineers, researchers, product people, domain experts, and dropouts (Conviction Embed).
• Evidence of building over narrative: the form leads with what you have shipped, not what you plan (Embed application).
• An insight, not a listed idea: you do not have to pursue one of Conviction's published theses (Conviction Embed), so the differentiated answer is usually a thesis they have not written down.

Embed by Conviction application answers that get read

✅ Good: "Shipped [PRODUCT] in [N] days. [N] weekly active developers, [X]% still active at 90 days. By demo day: [ONE FALSIFIABLE TARGET]." Verifiable artifacts, real numbers, one target you can be held to.

❌ Bad: "We are building the leading AI-native platform for enterprise workflow automation." No shipped thing, no number, no reason it has to be you.

The same rule governs the two-minute founder video. Spend the first fifteen seconds on the product running, then the team, then the wedge. Reviewers are screening for evidence, and a screen recording is evidence in a way a talking head is not.

Logistics: San Francisco, the retreat weekend, and demo day

You do not have to move to San Francisco. The program requires in-person attendance for one weekend of programming, while dinners, office hours, discussions, and alumni events are optional in-person activities (Conviction Embed).

The program page lists a San Francisco retreat on September 11 to 13 and a demo day on November 12, without printing a year next to either date, so confirm the live dates before you book anything (Conviction Embed). No fixed application close date is published; admission is rolling, so apply in the first week of the window rather than the last (Conviction Embed).

For demo day itself, First Round recommends arriving with slides covering founder background, problem, product, vision, go-to-market, traction, team, competition, deal dynamics, and diligence (First Round Review).

When this matters for your raise

Embed's money arrives unpriced, which pushes the real negotiation to the round it feeds. Carta recorded $30.4 billion in startup funding in Q1 2026, with more than 60% of venture capital raised by companies on Carta going to AI companies (Carta), and AI startups carried a median Series A valuation 38% higher than non-AI peers in 2025 (Carta). Run Embed next to a live seed process, not instead of one: weigh it against how to apply to a16z Speedrun and the HF0 residency application, and check AI startup funding this quarter before you set a price. If that parallel investor list is eating your week, tools like Causo keep the outreach running while admissions decisions sit.

FAQ

What is Embed by Conviction? Embed is Conviction's highly selective program for extraordinary early founding teams, combining company-building knowledge, a founder network, and an AI-native community (Conviction Embed). It invests $250,000 and plans a class of 10 to 12 companies per cohort. It is not a general-purpose accelerator.

How much does Embed invest? $250,000 through an uncapped, no-discount MFN SAFE, or at the same price as a financing round completed within the previous 60 days (Conviction Embed). Because the SAFE is uncapped and carries no discount, the cheque does not fix an ownership percentage at signing. The program also lists at least $1.2 million in AWS, Azure, and other compute credits.

Is Embed only for AI startups? Effectively yes. Embed is explicitly designed around AI-native or "Software 3.0" companies, so it is not a general-purpose accelerator (Conviction Embed). You do not need to be building one of the specific ideas Conviction lists, but you do need to be on the AI frontier.

Does Embed require moving to San Francisco? No. Teams do not have to relocate: the program requires in-person attendance for one weekend of programming, and dinners, office hours, discussions, and alumni events are optional in-person activities (Conviction Embed). Budget travel for the mandatory weekend and treat the rest as opt-in.

What is an uncapped MFN SAFE? An uncapped MFN SAFE has no valuation cap and no discount, so the investment does not determine a fixed ownership percentage when you sign (Y Combinator). The MFN clause lets the investor elect better terms offered to later SAFE investors, such as a lower cap or a larger discount, if those terms are issued in the future (Cooley GO). It converts at the price of your next priced round.