NVIDIA Inception is a starter program, not a partnership
I think the NVIDIA Inception Program acceptance is being slightly oversold in how it gets cited.
OpenGradient was accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program, described as important industry validation that the project is doing real AI compute work. CoinGecko
Inception is NVIDIA's startup support program. Thousands of companies have been accepted into it. It provides credits, technical resources, and visibility, not a deep co-development partnership or NVIDIA's institutional endorsement of the project's specific architecture.
It is a real and useful signal. It is a smaller signal than "NVIDIA partnership" framing implies.