Spark Grants

Spark Grants

Funds student startup ideas at Carnegie Mellon with early product validation grants.

Spark Grants are micro-grants of up to $3,000 offered by Carnegie Mellon University's James R. Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship through its Project Olympus incubator program. The grants are available exclusively to current CMU student founders who are actively engaged in Swartz Center programming, including Customer Discovery Kickstart, NSF I-Corps, Innovation Scholars, Swartz Fellows, or who are prior recipients of the Gebhardt Sandbox Fund or Beyond 2% grants. The Fall 2025 cycle is closed; the next cycle opens in Fall 2026, with specific dates not yet published as of mid-2026. Applications are submitted through the Pralent portal.

Eligibility is strictly limited to currently enrolled CMU students — alumni, staff, and faculty are not eligible for Spark Grants. Applicants must have met multiple times with a Project Olympus or Swartz Center Entrepreneur-in-Residence before applying. Approved uses of funds include conference or event attendance for customer discovery activities, intern hiring for minimum viable product or proof-of-concept development, and specialty equipment purchases for prototyping. Legal fees, patent costs, basic research, generic equipment such as laptops, food or beverage products, and general business launch costs are explicitly ineligible.

The Swartz Center was established in June 2015 through a $31 million gift from CMU alumnus James R. Swartz (co-founding partner of Accel Partners), and is part of the Tepper School of Business. Project Olympus, through which Spark Grants are administered, has supported companies that have generated over $1 billion in follow-on funding and 22 exits including Duolingo. Applicants should engage with Project Olympus programming well before the Fall 2026 cycle opens to ensure they meet the prior-engagement requirement and are positioned to submit a competitive application.