Amazon has taken a significant step by announcing a $230 million investment in the form of Amazon Web Service (AWS) credits in artificial intelligence startups.

This highlights cloud providers’ continual efforts to acquire and retain AI clients from the start. If they establish their ventures on AWS, the allocated credits will give early-stage generative AI startups free access to processing capacity, various AI models, and critical infrastructure.

Amazon already gives businesses $1 billion in cloud credits, but the strategic initiative places a greater focus on generative AI.

Matt Wood, vice president of Artificial Intelligence Products at AWS, stated that for more than 18 years, AWS has helped more startups build, launch, and scale their business than any other cloud provider.

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It’s no coincidence that 96% of all AI/ML unicorns run on AWS. He added that this new effort will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business.

Startups can access AWS credits to access compute, storage, database technologies, AWS Trainium, AWS Inferential 2, energy-efficient AI chips, Amazon SageMaker, and models for building generative AI applications through Amazon Bedrock.

AWS keep boosting AI Startups

Top early-stage companies employing generative AI to address complex problems in various industries, including financial services, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, business, and climate change, are identified by the AWS Generative AI Accelerator.

Attendees will have access to sessions on go-to-market strategies, stack optimisation, and ML performance enhancement.

Participants in the 10-week programme 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 developing, testing, training, and introducing 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 programme, which is intended to support innovative entrepreneurs.

AWS will announce selected startups for the second cohort on September 10, kick off the AI Startups program on October 1, and invite 80 participating startups to re: Invent 2024 in December.

Leonardo and Vevo Therapeutics’ AI Revolution on AWS

The co-founder and COO (Chief Operating Officer) of Leonardo, Jachin Bhasme, declared that AWS has been instrumental in enabling them to scale their generative AI platform to meet the rapidly growing demand from the global user community.

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Their robust generative AI infrastructure helped them reduce inferencing costs by 60% and accelerate their language model inference speeds by up to 35%. AI is a powerful suite of generative AI tools for creators and one of the 21 startups participating in the program’s first cohort.

Jachin added that the accelerator was also an incredible experience for them. The business and technical mentorship they received and the connections they made played a crucial role in shaping their product and strategy.

Vevo Therapeutics, an AI-driven biotechnology startup, has partnered with AWS to develop the next generation of AI models for drug discovery. The partnership enables Vevo to tap into AWS’s infrastructure and expertise in scaling model training and development.

For additional information about the AWS Generative AI Accelerator application process and the opportunities available to generative AI firms, apply here.