In a decisive move to accelerate the development of generative AI applications, Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, has announced a $230 million investment aimed at startups around the world.
This significant commitment is designed to empower early-stage companies with AWS credits, mentorship, and education, enabling them to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies.
The new investment includes funding for the second cohort of the AWS Generative AI Accelerator. This program offers hands-on expertise and up to $1 million in credits to each of the top 80 early-stage startups using generative AI to address complex challenges. Startups can apply for this transformative opportunity until July 19.
In his reaction, the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Products at AWS Matt Wood said: “For more than 18 years, AWS has helped more startups build, launch, and scale their businesses than any other cloud provider. “
He added:“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.”
Meanwhile, startups selected for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator will gain access to AWS’s comprehensive suite of technologies, including compute, storage, and database services. They will also benefit from AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia2, energy-efficient AI chips designed for high performance at low cost, and Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service for building and training AI models. Additionally, participants will have access to Amazon Bedrock for developing secure generative AI applications.
The AWS Generative AI Accelerator has already propelled numerous startups to new heights. For example, Leonardo.AI, a platform offering a powerful suite of generative AI tools for creators, experienced significant benefits from participating in the program.
In his address, the co-founder and COO of Leonardo.AI., Jachin Bhasme said: “AWS’s robust infrastructure helped us reduce inferencing costs by 60% and accelerate our language model inference speeds by up to 35%,” “The business and technical mentorship we received and the connections we made played a crucial role in shaping our product and strategy.”
Similarly, Vevo Therapeutics, an AI-driven biotechnology startup, has leveraged AWS’s resources to advance their innovative drug discovery platform.
The CEO and co-founder of Vevo Therapeutics, Nima Alidoust said: “AWS has the right combination of technology, network of partners, and potential customers in the life sciences space.
“Participating in the AWS Generative AI Accelerator provided us with valuable opportunities to tap into this community and to leverage AWS’s infrastructure and expertise in scaling model training and development.” he added
AWS will announce the selected startups for the second cohort on September 10, with the program kicking off on October 1 at Amazon’s Seattle campus. The journey will culminate in December at re:Invent 2024 in Las Vegas, where all 80 participating startups will have the chance to showcase their solutions to investors, customers, partners, and AWS leaders.
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Through this initiative, AWS continues to reinforce its commitment to fostering innovation and supporting the next generation of AI-driven startups, ultimately driving forward the global digital economy.
