AWS announces $230 million commitment for generative AI startups

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced Thursday a $230 million commitment to startups around the world to accelerate the creation of generative AI applications .

This will provide startups, especially early-stage companies, with AWS credits, mentorship and training to further their use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, Amazon said in a statement.

According to the release, part of the new commitment will fund the second cohort of AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a program that provides hands-on expertise and up to $1 million in credits to each of the first 80 startups using generative AI to solve complex challenges.

“For over 18 years, AWS has helped more startups build, launch, and grow their businesses than any other cloud provider. It’s no coincidence that 96% of all AI/ML unicorns run on AWS,

“Through this new effort, we will help startups launch and grow world-class businesses, providing them with the building blocks they need to launch new AI applications that will impact every facet of the way the world learns, connects and does business,” said Matt Wood. , vice president of artificial intelligence products at AWS.

According to the statement, startups can use AWS credits to access AWS compute, storage and database technologies, as well as AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia, energy-efficient AI chips that deliver high performance. at the lowest cost.

These credits can also be used on Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that helps businesses create and train their own base models (FMs), as well as access models and tools to easily and securely create generative AI applications via Amazon Bedrock.

Of note, the AWS Generative AI Accelerator identifies top early-stage startups that are using generative AI to solve complex challenges in areas such as financial services, healthcare, and life sciences, media and entertainment, business and climate change, among others.

Attendees will access sessions on improving ML performance, stack optimization, and go-to-market strategies. The 10-week program will connect participants with business and technical mentors based on industry vertical.

Startups will receive up to $1 million each in AWS credits to help them build, train, test and launch their generative AI solutions.

They will also have access to industry experts, technology and technical sessions from NVIDIA, the program’s presenting partner, and will be invited to join the NVIDIA Inception program, designed to nurture cutting-edge startups.

AWS will announce the startups selected for the second cohort on September 10, and the program will begin October 1 with in-person sessions at Amazon’s Seattle campus.

The 80 participating startups will be invited to attend and present their solutions to potential investors, customers, partners and AWS executives in December at re:Invent 2024 in Las Vegas.

Since 2006, AWS has continued to expand its services to support virtually any workload.

It now offers more than 240 comprehensive services for Compute, Storage, Database, Networking, Analytics, ML & AI, Internet of Things (IoT), Mobile, Security , hybrid, multimedia and application development, deployment and management from 105 availability. Zones within 33 geographic regions, with announced plans for 21 additional Availability Zones and seven additional AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Cloud European sovereign AWS.

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