Heaptalk, Jakarta — Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a US$230 million fund for artificial intelligence (AI) startups worldwide. The investment will help the next generation of startups turbocharge the development of new generative AI applications and bring innovations to market faster.
This assistance will provide startups, specifically early-stage companies, with AWS credit, mentorship, and education to use further artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. Furthermore, part of the new commitment will fund the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a program that provides hands-on expertise and up to $1 million in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage startups using generative AI to solve complex challenges.
“For over 18 years, AWS has helped more startups to build, launch, and scale their business than any other cloud provider. With this new effort, we will bolster 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,” Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Product at AWS, Matt Wood, affirmed.
According to the company, startups can use AWS credits to access AWS’s compute, storage, and database technologies, as well as AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia2, energy-efficient AI chips that offer high performance at the lowest cost. These credits can also be utilized on Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that helps companies build and train their FMs and access models and tools to quickly and securely build generative AI applications through Amazon Bedrock.
AWS Generative AI Accelerator to up startup growth
The AWS Generative AI Accelerator identifies top early-stage startups using generative AI to solve complex financial services, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change challenges. Participants will access sessions on ML performance enhancement, stack optimization, and go-to-market strategies.
The 10-week program will match participants with business and technical mentors based on industry verticals. Startups will receive up to US$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 be invited to join the Nvidia inception program, designed to nurture cutting-edge startups.
AWS will announce selected startups for the second cohort on September 10, and the program will kick off on October 1 with in-person sessions at Amazon’s Seattle campus. Around 80 participating startups will be invited to attend and showcase their solutions to potential investors, customers, and partners.
