What Türkiye's export incentives pay an AI company

AI companies are explicitly inside the programme. Software, games, mobile apps, AI, cybersecurity, big data and IT services are all named, and there is no minimum revenue to join the Standard Programme.

So eligibility is not the interesting question. The interesting question is that an AI company's cost structure looks nothing like a game studio's, and the programme was clearly written with the game studio in mind.

Article numbers refer to Decision No. 10962. Figures are caps on support paid, at roughly 47.7 TRY to the dollar.

Compute first

Infrastructure is where most AI companies spend, and the programme pays back 50% of it, up to 5,000,000 TL of support a year. That is about $105,000 in cash annually, covering roughly the first $210,000 of your infrastructure bill. Under the Branding Programme the cap rises to 7,500,000 TL, about $157,000.

For a company at the seed or Series A stage, that is a six figure sum arriving every year against a cost you were paying regardless. It also repeats: the item runs for five years, and the caps are revalued upward annually.

If your compute bill runs well past that ceiling, the hosting item simply tops out and the larger items take over. Advertising alone is capped at more than three times the hosting figure.

Where the money sits

Product advertising (Article 17). Advertising a specific software product to users abroad, at 50%, rising to 70% when the campaign targets one of the 20 Ministry target countries, which include the US, UK, Germany, Japan and South Korea. The cap is 15,000,000 TL per product per year, about $314,000. For any AI company running paid acquisition, this is the biggest number in the programme.

Brand advertising (Article 11). Marketing the company rather than a named product, same rates, capped at 25,000,000 TL, about $524,000. Note that social media spending has to be sponsored or boosted to qualify, so paid campaigns count and organic posting does not.

Sales and marketing staff (Article 19). Half the gross salary of newly hired business development, sales and marketing people, up to five in Türkiye at 90,000 TL per person per month, plus five more in overseas offices at 250,000 TL each. They have to be new hires, and engineers do not qualify.

Certification and accreditation (Article 7). 50%, capped at 4,000,000 TL, about $84,000, including renewals and surveillance audits.

This one deserves attention. Enterprise buyers of AI systems are asking for security and management-system certification before they will sign, and the cost of getting there is real and recurring. If you are buying certification specifically to sell abroad, that is what this item is for.

Software licences (Article 31), 50% up to 2,500,000 TL, covers your own tooling. Overseas trade fairs (Article 13) covers the conference circuit at 50%, or 70% in target countries, capped per event. Market research and database subscriptions (Article 23) covers analyst reports, though reports need pre-approval before you pay them.

The two questions to settle before you spend

Most of the programme is mechanical. For an AI company, two things need answering in advance, because the answer depends on how you structure and describe the activity.

Is training compute hosting? The item covers server, cloud and hosting costs incurred to deliver your software, app or platform to users abroad, and inference and serving sit comfortably inside that. A large one-off training run depends on how the activity is documented, which is something we would want to set up correctly with you in advance rather than argue about later.

What is a model API bill? If you build on someone else's models, that spend can look like infrastructure or like a licensed software input, and those are different articles with different caps. The answer follows your contract and your invoices, both of which you can still influence today.

Both are worth resolving before the spending happens rather than during a review, which is the general principle behind everything else on this site too.

What a claim tends to look like

For an AI company selling software to businesses abroad, the shape usually comes out something like this: product and brand advertising as the largest line, then salary support for the commercial team, then certification, then hosting capped out at its ceiling, then tooling and events.

Put those together and a well run AI company with real commercial spending is claiming several hundred thousand dollars a year, against costs it was going to carry anyway.

The calculator has every item above if you want to put your own numbers through it. If the training and API questions apply to you, they are worth a conversation before your next big commitment rather than after.