Startup Qatar Investment Program — START track
The most generous non-dilutive package in the Gulf, in exchange for basing the company in Doha.
- Amount
- $1,100,000
- Issuer type
- Government
- Decision time
- 4–6 weeks
- Effort
- Medium — 3–5 days of work
Key facts
| Amount | $1,100,000 — GROW track up to $5,500,000 |
| Funding type | Grant — non-dilutive, plus 5-year visa, fee waivers, co-working |
| Issuer | Qatar Development Bank |
| Who can apply | Global founders at PoC/MVP stage willing to incorporate in Qatar |
| Sectors | AI/ML · FinTech · HealthTech · Climate · EdTech · Cyber |
| Payout | Tranches against relocation and product milestones |
| Deadline | No fixed deadline |
Eligibility criteria
9 criteria · 6 are hard requirements
- Registered — or willing to register — a company in QatarRequired
- Working proof of concept or MVPRequired
- Operating in one of the six priority sectorsRequired
- At least one founder able to relocateRequired
- Company less than 5 years oldRequired
- No existing QDB funding for the same productRequired
- Under $5M raised to datePreferred
- Revenue or paying pilots preferred at START stagePreferred
- Materials in English or ArabicPreferred
Rewritten from the official page into yes/no checks. Nothing here is summarised away — if the source states it, it is on this list.
What you have to submit
- —Pitch deck
- —Three-year financial model
- —Founder passports
- —Cap table
Odds, as reported by the issuer
5,800+ applications received · 37 companies funded · $39M deployed
Update history
Source: startupqatar.qa ↗
✓ checked 6 hours ago
- 6 hours agoagentFull re-crawl of the official page — no changes detected
- 11 days agoagentDeadline and amount confirmed against the issuer's page
- 01 Jul 2026humanHuman review — criteria rewritten into yes/no checks
Related
| SBIR Phase I — America's Seed Fund (NSF) | $275,000 | Closes 06 Aug 2026 |
| EIC Accelerator — deep tech scale-ups | €2,500,000 | Closes 08 Oct 2026 |
| Innovate UK Smart Grants — July round | £500,000 | Closes 30 Jul 2026 |