Request for eligibility review — Inception application declined (solo founder, two-contact rule)

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Hi @natashap — our NVIDIA Inception application was declined in July 2026 with “not currently the right fit,” and the portal now shows a cooldown until January 21, 2027.

I’m a solo technical founder and currently hold both the developer and business-executive functions. Based on what’s already documented on this forum, I believe that’s what triggered the decline rather than the merits of the application:

In this June 10 thread, @MarkusHoHo confirmed that “the requirement of 2 distinct contacts is Inception policy,” and noted that the public FAQ and general requirements only state “employ at least one developer” — which reads as including self-employed developers. He also said he would ask the Inception team to make those texts clearer.

So I’m not asking anyone to re-litigate the policy. My ask is narrower and practical:

  1. Can you confirm the two-contact requirement is what triggered our decline?
  2. If we add a second contact with a separate business email, does that make us eligible — and can the application be reset for resubmission, or do we have to wait out the cooldown even though the blocking condition would be resolved?

Point 2 is the one that matters to us. If the cooldown is a fixed penalty regardless of whether the underlying condition is fixed, we’ll plan around it. If it can be reset once the contact requirement is satisfied, we’d like to do that now.

I’ve written to inceptionprogram@nvidia.com and haven’t received a response, which is why I’m asking here.

For context on what we’re building: MaterIA, a transformer for molecular property prediction. Paper published on ChemRxiv (DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv.15000519/v1), provisional patent filed with the USPTO. We matched Meta FAIR’s JMP result on ANI-1x using approximately 33 GPU-hours on a single A10G, versus their approximately 34,400 GPU-hours.

Happy to provide the application reference and contact email by DM.

Thank you,
Solo founder, AiGO México — aigo.com.mx

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Hi @direccion7

Welcome to the NVIDIA Developer forums. Unfortunately, the Inception team is not monitoring this forum. Email is the only way to commmunicate with the team. I expect that there is a large backlog that they are working through, so expect response times to be long.

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Thanks @TomNVIDIA — understood, and the note about the backlog is useful context.

One narrow follow-up and then I’ll stay out of the way. I’m not asking for a decision here — only whether you’d be willing to flag this one for the team, so it lands in the queue with the specific question already attached.

The question is binary: does adding a second contact with a separate business email clear the block and allow a reset, or does the cooldown stand regardless of whether the blocking condition is resolved?

I’ve written to inceptionprogram@nvidia.com and I’ll wait on the backlog. Thanks either way.