What’s required to qualify for an academic license? Could you split your nonprofit into a business aspect, and then a walled-off research aspect (funded by the business aspect) that by itself fits the definition of academia by which these companies judge?

Or, more simply, could your nonprofit partner with a University on R&D, with the University acquiring a license to the solver and then retaining you as a project volunteer (on loan from your nonprofit) to use the solver?

Presumably, one difference in both cases is that the output of the solver would need to be published in the form of a scientific paper, as well as being used in your nonprofit’s development.