Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., revealed a $230 million pledge to help startups worldwide speed up the development of generative AI applications.
Amazon released a statement saying that this will give startups, particularly those in their early stages of development, access to mentorship, education, and AWS credits to help them advance their use of ML and AI technologies.
A portion of the new commitment, according to the statement, will go toward funding the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a program that offers each of the top 80 early-stage startups using generative AI to solve complex challenges with up to $1 million in credits and practical expertise.
“For more than 18 years, AWS has helped more startups to build, launch, and scale their business than any other cloud provider—it’s no coincidence that 96 percent of all AI/ML unicorns run on AWS,
“With this new effort, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks they need to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business,” said Matt Wood, vice president, Artificial Intelligence Products at AWS.
The statement claims that startups can use AWS credits to access energy-efficient AI chips called AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia, which provide high performance at the lowest possible cost, in addition to AWS compute, storage, and database technologies.
The credits can also be utilized for Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that assists businesses in creating and refining their own foundation models (FMs), as well as for Amazon Bedrock, which provides models and tools for quickly and safely creating generative AI applications.
AWS Generative AI Accelerator, it is mentioned, finds the best early-stage startups that are applying generative AI to address difficult problems in a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change.
Attendees will have access to sessions on go-to-market tactics, stack optimization, and ML performance enhancement. Participants in the 10-week program will be paired with technical and business mentors according to their industry vertical.
AWS credits worth up to $1 million will be given to startups to assist with the development, testing, training, and introduction of their generative AI solutions.
In addition, NVIDIA, the program’s presenting partner, will provide them with access to industry experts, technology, and technical sessions. They will also receive an invitation to join the NVIDIA Inception program, which is intended to support innovative startups.
On September 10, AWS will reveal which startups have been chosen for the second cohort. On October 1, the program will begin with in-person sessions at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
